THE CHIEFTAINESS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 8149, 21 April 1887, Page 6

THE CHIEFTAINESS.

(Longman's Magazine^) After dinner we returned to the verandah, where we found Umslopogaas cleaning all the rifles. This was the only work that he ever did or was asked to do, for as a Zulu jhief it was beneath his dignity to work with his hands, but such as it was he did it very well. It was a curious sight to see the great Zulu sitting there upon the floor, his battle-axe resting against the wall behind him, whilst his long, aristocraticlooking hands were busily employed, delicately and with the utmost care, cleaning the mechanism of the breech-loaders. He had a name for each gun. One—a double four-bore belonging to Sir Henry—was the Thunderer; another, my 500 Express, which had a peculiarly sharp report, was “ the little one who spoke like a whip ”; the Winchester repeaters were “ the women, who talked so fast that you could not tell one word from another ”; the six Martinis were “ the common people”; and so on with them all. It was very carious to hear him addressing each gun as he cleaned it, as though it were an individual, and in a vein of the quaintest humour. He did the same with his battleaxe, which he seemed to look upon as an intimate friend, and to which he would at times talk by the hour, going over all his old adventures with it—and dreadful enough some of them were. By a piece of grim humour, he had named this axe “ Inkosi-kaas,” which is the Zulu word for chieftainess. For a long while I could not make out why he gave it such a name, and at last I asked him, when he informed me that the axe was evidently feminine, because of her womanly habit of prying very deep into things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because all men fell down before her, struck dumb at the sight cf her beauty and power. In the same way he would consult “ Inkosi-kaas ” if in any dilemma ; and when I asked him why he did so, he informed me it was because she must needs be wise, having “ looked into so many people’s brains.” I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon. It was of the nature of a pole-axe. The haft, made out of an enormous rhinoceros horn, was 3ft Sin long, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent the hand from slipping. This horn haft, though so massive, was as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make assurance doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a few inches with copper wire—all the parts where the hands grip being thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the head were scored a number of little nicks, each nick representing a man killed in battle with the weapon. The axe itself was made of the most beautiful steel, and apparently of European manufacture, though Umslopogaas did not know where it came from, having taken it from the hand of a chief ho had killed in battle many years before. It was not very heavy, the head weighing 2 a lb, as nearly as I could judge. The cutting part was slightly concave in shape—not convex, as is generally the case with savage battleaxes—and sharp as a razor, measuring 5.i in across the widest part. Iro a the back of the axe sprang a stout spike 4in long, for the last two of which it was hollow, and shaped like a leather pouch, with an opening for anything forced into the hollow at the punch end to be pushed out above—in fact, in this respect it exactly resembled a butcher’s pole - axe. It was with this punch end, as we afterwards discovered, that TJmslopogaas usually struck when fighting, driving a neat round hole in his adversary’s skull and only using the broad cutting edge for a circular sweep, or sometimes in a melee. I think he considered the punch a neater and more sportsmanlike tool, and it was from his habit of pecking at his enemy with it he got his name of "Woodpecker.” Certainly in his hands it was a terribly efficient one. Such was TJmslopogaas’s axe, Inkosikaas, the most fatal hand-to-hand weapon that I ever saw, and one which he cherished as much as his own life. It ever left his hand except when he was eating, and then he always sat with it under his leg.