Kafirs

“ At length even the very bones are picked clean, and thrown over the feasters’ shoulders to the dogs. Then voices are raised and once more the kraal becomes a scene of wild and excited stir. Roused by a copious indulgence in an unwonted stimulant, the Kafirs leap to their feet. Weapons are brandished, and the firelight glows upon assegai points and rolling eyeballs. A wild war-song rises upon the air; then falling into circular formation, the whole gathering of excited warriors join in, beating time with their feet—clashing the hefts of their weapons together. ”

“ The Kafirs are described as strong athletic men with a language of their own, the features and complexions of Europeans, and fond of dancing, hunting, and drinking. They also play at leap-frog, shake hands as Englishmen, and cannot sit cross-legged on the ground. When a deputation of Kafirs came to Sir William Macnaghten at Jalalabad, the Afghans exclaimed: 'Here are your relations coming!' From the days of Alexander the Great the Siah-posh Kafirs have never been conquered, and they have never embraced Islam. ”

“ And even as he seemed to fear everything, the Kafirs certainly feared him. Kafirs, you know, go naked to all the little winds, and the breezes that will not hurt a thatch carry death to them. They are deaf to God. but the devil has but to whisper, and they hear. They bought shameful watches and sleepy diamonds from the Peruvian, as they kill a goat at the flowering of the crops—to appease something that might else visit them in the night. ”

“ Ghastly shadows, they flitted in the precincts of hostile villages far distant from their own valleys, living upon the poorest food carried in a fetid goatskin bag; ever ready to stab in the darkness or to wriggle through apertures, to slay as they slept men, women and babies. Then, with clothing for prize, and human ears as a trophy, they sped, watchful as hares, for their far-away hills, avenger Pathans racing furiously in their track. Kafirs, most faithful to one another, never abandoned a comrade. ”

“ I’ve been burnt out, stick and stone, by the Kafirs in three successive wars, and have had to begin life over again, yet I’ve always got on. The secret of it is to look after everything yourself. It won’t do to set your people to work and go away expecting them to do it, you must off with your jacket and work with them. And you must be here, there, and everywhere at once, Kafirs want continual looking after; directly they begin to think the ‘Baas’ is getting careless, good-bye to anything going straight. ”

“ The people are the Kalash section of the Kafirs, inferior in appearance, manner, and disposition to their neighbours situated westwards; they pay a small tribute in kind to Chitral, and are allowed to retain their own manners and customs. To Daras Karu, in the Bamburath Vale, famed for its pears, I next proceeded; here also are Kalash Kafirs, and some Bashgali settlers. The valley is very narrow, and the cultivation restricted principally to terraced fields on the hill-slopes. ”

“ In fact, our civilization has not yet mounted to effervescence, so we have no dregs. Every white person on the ground was well clad, well fed, and apparently well-to-do. The "lower orders" were represented by a bright fringe of coolies and Kafirs, sleek, grinning and as fat as ortolans, especially the babies. Most of the Kafirs were dressed in snow-white knickerbockers and shirts bordered by gay bands of color, with fillets of scarlet ribbon tied round their heads, while as for the coolies, they shone out like a shifting bed of tulips, so bright were the women's chuddahs and the men's jackets. ”

“ It is not to be wondered at that the Kafirs are such happy, contented mortals, for the sun, of which they get so much, gives more life and vitality than any medicine. One afternoon the boys sighted a herd of spring-bok some distance away in the veldt. They were feeding in a depression in the plain about seven hundred yards away, and our hunter, sighting his rifle, carefully rested it on an ant-hill. ”

“ Grazing and dairy-farming are the real trade of the Kafirs, the surplus produce being exchanged on the frontier or sold for Kabul rupees. Herders watch their charges fully armed against marauders.
History.—The history of Kafiristan has always been of the floating legendary sort. At the present day there are men living in Chitral and on other parts of the Kafiristan frontier who are prepared to testify as eye-witnesses to marvels observed, and also heard, by them, not only in the more remote valleys but even in the Afghan borderland itself. ”

“ The native loves a stick, and as he is forbidden to carry either an assegai—which is a very formidable weapon indeed—or even a knobkerry, only one degree less dangerous, he consoles himself with a wand or switch in case of coming across a snake. You never see a Kafir without something of the sort in his hand: if he is not twirling a light stick, then he has a sort of rude reed pipe from which he extracts sharp and tuneless sounds. As a race, the Kafirs make the effect of possessing a fine physique: they walk with an erect bearing and a light step, but in true leisurely savage fashion. ”

“ Two of the Kafirs start off on that intent, but it takes some time to “collect” the truant, who runs hither and thither, bleating idiotically. At last he is brought back to his post of honour at the head of the flock; the driving and the row recommences, and the goat leaps into the water manfully; but he is leading a forlorn hope, indeed, for not one of the sheep will follow him—devil a sheep—though they are on the brink of the water. There they stick, firmly and stubbornly. ”

“ But the Kafirs could not stand against the guns of the colonists, and the second war terminated in the advance of an overwhelming force into Kafirland, and the annexation of a large slice of territory, east of the Great Fish River, to the colony. ... For a third time, in 1835, a horde of about 10,000 fighting men of the Kafirs spread fire and slaughter and pillage over the eastern districts, a war which led, as the previous ones had done, to a more extended invasion of Kafraria by the British troops, and the subjugation of the tribes east of the Kei river. ”

“ Men would start suddenly from beside their fellows and gaze expectantly out upon the approaches to the kraal, or now and again the heads of a whole group would turn in eager scrutiny of the surrounding veldt. For strung out upon the hillsides in twos and threes, or in parties of ten or a dozen, some mounted, some afoot, come a great number of Kafirs. On they come: those who are mounted kicking their shaggy little ponies into a headlong gallop; those who are not, starting into a run, leaping into the air, singing, or now and again venting a shrill and ear-splitting whistle. ”

“ A student of nature all the world over, he had rejoiced in finding ready to his hand so promising a subject as this fine race of savages, dwelling in close proximity to, and indeed in and among, the abodes of the white colonists, and instead of learning to look upon the Kafirs as so many more or less troublesome and indifferent farm servants, actual stock-lifters and potential foemen, he had started by recognising their many good qualities and resolving to make a complete study of the race and its characteristics. ”

“ These Kafirs are continually arriving, coming from long distances, walking sometimes as far as 1,500 miles in the interior; but the household servants are different; they are a heterogeneous mixture of Malays from Cape Town and Kafirs and the imported coolies from Natal. It is difficult to say which makes the worst servant ”

“ A Kafir servant usually gets one pound a month, his clothes and food. The former consists of a shirt and short trousers of coarse check cotton, a soldier's old great-coat for winter, and plenty of mealy-meal for "scoff." If he is a good servant and worth making comfortable, you give him a trifle every week to buy meat. Kafirs are very fond of going to their kraals, and you have to make them sign an agreement to remain with you so many months, generally six. ”

“ Sir Henry Yule, a scientific soldier, a profound geographer and a careful student, as the result of his researches thought that the present Kafiristan was part of that pagan country stretching between Kashmir and Kabul which medieval Asiatics referred to vaguely as Bilaur, a name to be found in Marco Polo as Bolor. The first distinct mention of the Kafirs as a separate people appears in the history of Timur. On his march to the invasion of India the people at Andarab appealed to Timur for help against the Kator and the Siah-Posh Kafirs. ”

“ They are sometimes accidental, but more frequently lighted by the natives for the sake of getting a fresh growth of young grass on the part burned and thereby attracting the game. Sometimes the cause is even slighter. The Kafirs are fond of eating the mice and other small inhabitants of the veldt, and they fire the grass to frighten these little creatures, and catch them before they can reach their holes, with the further convenience of having them ready roasted. ”

“ Revenge, especially on neighbouring Kafirs, is obtained at any price. Kafirs are subtle, crafty, quick in danger and resolute, as might be expected of people who have been plunderers and assassins for centuries, whose lives were the forfeit of a fault in unflinchingness or of a moment’s vacillation. Stealthy daring, born of wary and healthy nerves and the training of generations, almost transformed into an instinct, is the national characteristic. ”

“ When the world below is busy there are about 3,500 Kafirs at work,—some small proportion upon the reef which has to be got into order so that it shall neither tumble in, nor impede the work, nor overlay the diamondiferous soil as it still does in some places; but by far the greater number are employed in digging. Their task is to pick up the earth and shovel it into the buckets and iron receptacles. ”

“ With the Kafirs, who differ much from negroes, "the skin, except among the tribes near Delagoa Bay, is not usually black, the prevailing colour being a mixture of black and red, the most common shade being chocolate. Dark complexions, as being most common are naturally held in the highest esteem. To be told that he is light-coloured, or like a white man, would be deemed a very poor compliment by a Kafir. I have heard of one unfortunate man who was so very fair that no girl would marry him." ”

“ I heard that the dragoons were much disgusted at being forced to ride down and shoot the Kafirs; who,—although they fight well,—if they are overtaken in flight, throw themselves on the ground, and plead for life. They are tall, fine, and powerful men, and their [370] colour a good clear brown. I have heard it asserted that the Kafirs never eat salt; if it be true, it is a most remarkable singularity. The only garment worn by them is the kaross: for one made of the skin of the wild-cat, consisting of fourteen skins, they demand in Cape Town three pounds fifteen shillings ”

“ A race in the present condition of the Kafirs needs nothing more than the creation of a body of intelligent and educated persons of its own blood, who are able to enter into the difficulties of their humbler kinsfolk and guide them wisely. ”

“ The tendency of disease among the Kafirs is to collapse and paralysis. No year goes round without deaths from cold and wet, which they bear less well than European settlers. They are apt to sink under any serious form of disease. ”

“ The Kafirs of the eastern province and of Natal are more raw than the "Cape boys." They make good platelayers on railways, and having plenty of physical strength, will do any sort of rough work they are set to. But they have no aptitude for trades requiring skill, and it will take a generation or two to fit them for the finer kinds of carpentry or metal-work, or for the handling of delicate machinery. ”

“ Throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century the English settlers were engaged in constant Kafir wars, which resulted in the gradual subjugation of both Kafirs and Zulus.
Kafirs. Fair-skinned mountaineers of Kafiristan, between the Kabul River and Hindu Kush. An offshoot of the Aryan family, thought by some to be descendants in part of the Greek troops with which Alexander the Great invaded India. ”

“ They must, however, be prepared, until a regular afflux of labourers has been set up, to offer, as the Kimberley people do, wages far in excess of anything the Kafirs could possibly gain among their own people, in order to overcome the distaste of the native—a very natural distaste, due to centuries of indolence in a hot climate—to any hard and continuous toil. ”

“ The Kafirs are natives of Caffraria, Caffreland, or, more properly, “Kafirland,” from the Arabic word Kafir, which signifies “Unbeliever;” these people are a hardy and warlike race; they are armed with light spears, about seven feet in length, called assagais, of which each warrior carries six or eight, and a kind of club for close fighting, called a kerrie; the former they throw with great force and dexterity, seldom missing an object at a less distance than sixty paces. ”

“ I suppose it is,” growled Carhayes. “I’ll clear out, trek to some other part of the country where a fellow isn’t overrun by a lot of worthless, lazy, red Kafirs. I wish to Heaven they’d only start this precious war. I’d take it out of some of their hides. Have some better sport than buck-hunting then, eh?”
“Perhaps. But there may be no war after all. Meanwhile you have won the enmity of every Kafir in Nteya’s and Ncanduku’s locations. ”