CHAPTER XIII
ABOUT THE ZU-VENDI PEOPLE
And now the curtain is down for a few hours, and the actors in
this novel drama are plunged in dewy sleep. Perhaps we should
except Nyleptha, whom the reader may, if poetically inclined,
imagine lying in her bed of state encompassed by her maidens,
tiring women, guards, and all the other people and appurtenances
that surround a throne, and yet not able to slumber for thinking
of the strangers who had visited a country where no such strangers
had ever come before, and wondering, as she lay awake, who they
were and what their past has been, and if she was ugly compared
to the women of their native place. I, however, not being poetically
inclined, will take advantage of the lull to give some account
of the people among whom we found ourselves, compiled, needless
to state, from information which we subsequently collected.
The name of this country, to begin at the beginning, is Zu-Vendis,
from Zu, 'yellow', and Vendis, 'place or country'. Why it is
called the Yellow Country I have never been able to ascertain
accurately, nor do the inhabitants themselves know. Three reasons
are, however, given, each of which would suffice to account for
it. The first is that the name owes its origin to the great
quantity of gold that is found in the land. Indeed, in this
respect Zu-Vendis is a veritable Eldorado, the precious metal
being extraordinarily plentiful. At present it is collected
from purely alluvial diggings, which we subsequently inspected,
and which are situated within a day's journey from Milosis, being
mostly found in pockets and in nuggets weighing from an ounce
up to six or seven pounds in weight. But other diggings of a
similar nature are known to exist, and I have besides seen great
veins of gold-bearing quartz. In Zu-Vendis gold is a much commoner
metal than silver, and thus it has curiously enough come to pass
that silver is the legal tender of the country.
The second reason given is, that at certain times of the year
the native grasses of the country, which are very sweet and good,
turn as yellow as ripe corn; and the third arises from a tradition
that the people were originally yellow skinned, but grew white
after living for many generations upon these high lands. Zu-Vendis
is a country about the size of France, is, roughly speaking,
oval in shape; and on every side cut off from the surrounding
territory by illimitable forests of impenetrable thorn, beyond
which are said to be hundreds of miles of morasses, deserts,
and great mountains. It is, in short, a huge, high tableland
rising up in the centre of the dark continent, much as in southern
Africa flat-topped mountains rise from the level of the surrounding
veldt. Milosis itself lies, according to my aneroid, at a level
of about nine thousand feet above the sea, but most of the land
is even higher, the greatest elevation of the open country being,
I believe, about eleven thousand feet. As a consequence the
climate is, comparatively speaking, a cold one, being very similar
to that of southern England, only brighter and not so rainy.
The land is, however, exceedingly fertile, and grows all cereals
and temperate fruits and timber to perfection; and in the lower-lying
parts even produces a hardy variety of sugar-cane. Coal is found
in great abundance, and in many places crops out from the surface;
and so is pure marble, both black and white. The same may be
said of almost every metal except silver, which is scarce, and
only to be obtained from a range of mountains in the north.
Zu-Vendis comprises in her boundaries a great variety of scenery,
including two ranges of snow-clad mountains, one on the western
boundary beyond the impenetrable belt of thorn forest, and the
other piercing the country from north to south, and passing at
a distance of about eighty miles from Milosis, from which town
its higher peaks are distinctly visible. This range forms the
chief watershed of the land. There are also three large lakes
-- the biggest, namely that whereon we emerged, and which is
named Milosis after the city, covering some two hundred square
miles of country -- and numerous small ones, some of them salt.
The population of this favoured land is, comparatively speaking,
dense, numbering at a rough estimate from ten to twelve millions.
It is almost purely agricultural in its habits, and divided
into great classes as in civilized countries. There is a territorial
nobility, a considerable middle class, formed principally of
merchants, officers of the army, etc.; but the great bulk of
the people are well-to-do peasants who live upon the lands of
the lords, from whom they hold under a species of feudal tenure.
The best bred people in the country are, as I think I have said,
pure whites with a somewhat southern cast of countenance; but
the common herd are much darker, though they do not show any
negro or other African characteristics. As to their descent
I can give no certain information. Their written records, which
extend back for about a thousand years, give no hint of it.
One very ancient chronicler does indeed, in alluding to some
old tradition that existed in his day, talk of it as having probably
originally 'come down with the people from the coast', but that
may mean little or nothing. In short, the origin of the Zu-Vendi
is lost in the mists of time. Whence they came or of what race
they are no man knows. Their architecture and some of their
sculptures suggest an Egyptian or possibly an Assyrian origin;
but it is well known that their present remarkable style of building
has only sprung up within the last eight hundred years, and they
certainly retain no traces of Egyptian theology or customs.
Again, their appearance and some of their habits are rather Jewish;
but here again it seems hardly conceivable that they should have
utterly lost all traces of the Jewish religion. Still, for aught
I know, they may be one of the lost ten tribes whom people are
so fond of discovering all over the world, or they may not.
I do not know, and so can only describe them as I find them,
and leave wiser heads than mine to make what they can out of
it, if indeed this account should ever be read at all, which
is exceedingly doubtful.
And now after I have said all this, I am, after all, going to
hazard a theory of my own, though it is only a very little one,
as the young lady said in mitigation of her baby. This theory
is founded on a legend which I have heard among the Arabs on
the east coast, which is to the effect that 'more than two thousand
years ago' there were troubles in the country which was known
as Babylonia, and that thereon a vast horde of Persians came
down to Bushire, where they took ship and were driven by the
north-east monsoon to the east coast of Africa, where, according
to the legend, 'the sun and fire worshippers' fell into conflict
with the belt of Arab settlers who even then were settled on
the east coast, and finally broke their way through them, and,
vanishing into the interior, were no more seen. Now, I ask,
is it not at least possible that the Zu-Vendi people are the
descendants of these 'sun and fire worshippers' who broke through
the Arabs and vanished? As a matter of fact, there is a good
deal in their characters and customs that tallies with the somewhat
vague ideas that I have of Persians. Of course we have no books
of reference here, but Sir Henry says that if his memory does
not fail him, there was a tremendous revolt in Babylon about
500 BC, whereon a vast multitude were expelled from the city.
Anyhow, it is a well-established fact that there have been many
separate emigrations of Persians from the Persian Gulf to the
east coast of Africa up to as lately as seven hundred years ago.
There are Persian tombs at Kilwa, on the east coast, still in
good repair, which bear dates showing them to be just seven hundred
years old. {Endnote 12}
In addition to being an agricultural people, the Zu-Vendi are,
oddly enough, excessively warlike, and as they cannot from the
exigencies of their position make war upon other nations, they
fight among each other like the famed Kilkenny cats, with the
happy result that the population never outgrows the power of
the country to support it. This habit of theirs is largely fostered
by the political condition of the country. The monarchy is nominally
an absolute one, save in so far as it is tempered by the power
of the priests and the informal council of the great lords; but,
as in many other institutions, the king's writ does not run unquestioned
throughout the length and breadth of the land. In short, the
whole system is a purely feudal one (though absolute serfdom
or slavery is unknown), all the great lords holding nominally
from the throne, but a number of them being practically independent,
having the power of life and death, waging war against and making
peace with their neighbours as the whim or their interests lead
them, and even on occasion rising in open rebellion against their
royal master or mistress, and, safely shut up in their castles
and fenced cities, as far from the seat of government, successfully
defying them for years.
Zu-Vendis has had its king-makers as well as England, a fact
that will be well appreciated when I state that eight different
dynasties have sat upon the throne in the last one thousand years,
every one of which took its rise from some noble family that
succeeded in grasping the purple after a sanguinary struggle.
At the date of our arrival in the country things were a little
better than they had been for some centuries, the last king,
the father of Nyleptha and Sorais, having been an exceptionally
able and vigorous ruler, and, as a consequence, he kept down
the power of the priests and nobles. On his death, two years
before we reached Zu-Vendis, the twin sisters, his children,
were, following an ancient precedent, called to the throne, since
an attempt to exclude either would instantly have provoked a
sanguinary civil war; but it was generally felt in the country
that this measure was a most unsatisfactory one, and could hardly
be expected to be permanent. Indeed, as it was, the various
intrigues that were set on foot by ambitious nobles to obtain
the hand of one or other of the queens in marriage had disquieted
the country, and the general opinion was that there would be
bloodshed before long.
I will now pass on to the question of the Zu-Vendi religion,
which is nothing more or less than sun-worship of a pronounced
and highly developed character. Around this sun-worship is grouped
the entire social system of the Zu-Vendi. It sends its roots
through every institution and custom of the land. From the cradle
to the grave the Zu-Vendi follows the sun in every sense of the
saying. As an infant he is solemnly held up in its light and
dedicated to 'the symbol of good, the expression of power, and
the hope of Eternity', the ceremony answering to our baptism.
Whilst still a tiny child, his parents point out the glorious
orb as the presence of a visible and beneficent god, and he worships
it at its up-rising and down-setting. Then when still quite
small, he goes, holding fast to the pendent end of his mother's
'kaf' (toga), up to the temple of the Sun of the nearest city,
and there, when at midday the bright beams strike down upon the
golden central altar and beat back the fire that burns thereon,
he hears the white-robed priests raise their solemn chant of
praise and sees the people fall down to adore, and then, amidst
the blowing of the golden trumpets, watched the sacrifice thrown
into the fiery furnace beneath the altar. Here he comes again
to be declared 'a man' by the priests, and consecrated to war
and to good works; here before the solemn altar he leads his
bride; and here too, if differences shall unhappily arise, he
divorces her.
And so on, down life's long pathway till the last mile is travelled,
and he comes again armed indeed, and with dignity, but no longer
a man. Here they bear him dead and lay his bier upon the falling
brazen doors before the eastern altar, and when the last ray
from the setting sun falls upon his white face the bolts are
drawn and he vanishes into the raging furnace beneath and is ended.
The priests of the Sun do not marry, but are recruited by young
men specially devoted to the work by their parents and supported
by the State. The nomination to the higher offices of the priesthood
lies with the Crown, but once appointed the nominees cannot be
dispossessed, and it is scarcely too much to say that they really
rule the land. To begin with, they are a united body sworn to
obedience and secrecy, so that an order issued by the High Priest
at Milosis will be instantly and unhesitatingly acted upon by
the resident priest of a little country town three or four hundred
miles off. They are the judges of the land, criminal and civil,
an appeal lying only to the lord paramount of the district, and
from him to the king; and they have, of course, practically unlimited
jurisdiction over religious and moral offences, together with
a right of excommunication, which, as in the faiths of more highly
civilized lands, is a very effective weapon. Indeed, their rights
and powers are almost unlimited, but I may as well state here
that the priests of the Sun are wise in their generation, and
do not push things too far. It is but very seldom that they
go to extremes against anybody, being more inclined to exercise
the prerogative of mercy than run the risk of exasperating the
powerful and vigorous-minded people on whose neck they have set
their yoke, lest it should rise and break it off altogether.
Another source of the power of the priests is their practical
monopoly of learning, and their very considerable astronomical
knowledge, which enables them to keep a hold on the popular mind
by predicting eclipses and even comets. In Zu-Vendis only a
few of the upper classes can read and write, but nearly all the
priests have this knowledge, and are therefore looked upon as
learned men.
The law of the country is, on the whole, mild and just, but differs
in several respects from our civilized law. For instance, the
law of England is much more severe upon offences against property
than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion
is money. A man may half kick his wife to death or inflict horrible
sufferings upon his children at a much cheaper rate of punishment
than he can compound for the theft of a pair of old boots.
In Zu-Vendis this is not so, for there they rightly or wrongly look
upon the person as of more consequence than goods and chattels,
and not, as in England, as a sort of necessary appendage to the
latter. For murder the punishment is death, for treason death,
for defrauding the orphan and the widow, for sacrilege, and for
attempting to quit the country (which is looked on as a sacrilege)
death. In each case the method of execution is the same, and
a rather awful one. The culprit is thrown alive into the fiery
furnace beneath one of the altars to the Sun. For all other
offences, including the offence of idleness, the punishment is
forced labour upon the vast national buildings which are always
going on in some part of the country, with or without periodical
floggings, according to the crime.
The social system of the Zu-Vendi allows considerable liberty
to the individual, provided he does not offend against the laws
and customs of the country. They are polygamous in theory, though
most of them have only one wife on account of the expense. By
law a man is bound to provide a separate establishment for each
wife. The first wife also is the legal wife, and her children
are said to be 'of the house of the Father'. The children of
the other wives are of the houses of their respective mothers.
This does not, however, imply any slur upon either mother or
children. Again, a first wife can, on entering into the married
state, make a bargain that her husband shall marry no other wife.
This, however, is very rarely done, as the women are the great
upholders of polygamy, which not only provides for their surplus
numbers but gives greater importance to the first wife, who is
thus practically the head of several households. Marriage is
looked upon as primarily a civil contract, and, subject to certain
conditions and to a proper provision for children, is dissoluble
at the will of both contracting parties, the divorce, or 'unloosing',
being formally and ceremoniously accomplished by going through
certain portions of the marriage ceremony backwards.
The Zu-Vendi are on the whole a very kindly, pleasant, and light-hearted
people. They are not great traders and care little about money,
only working to earn enough to support themselves in that class
of life in which they were born. They are exceedingly conservative,
and look with disfavour upon changes. Their legal tender is
silver, cut into little squares of different weights; gold is
the baser coin, and is about of the same value as our silver.
It is, however, much prized for its beauty, and largely used
for ornaments and decorative purposes. Most of the trade, however,
is carried on by means of sale and barter, payment being made
in kind. Agriculture is the great business of the country, and
is really well understood and carried out, most of the available
acreage being under cultivation. Great attention is also given
to the breeding of cattle and horses, the latter being unsurpassed
by any I have ever seen either in Europe or Africa.
The land belongs theoretically to the Crown, and under the Crown
to the great lords, who again divide it among smaller lords,
and so on down to the little peasant farmer who works his forty
'reestu' (acres) on a system of half-profits with his immediate
lord. In fact the whole system is, as I have said, distinctly
feudal, and it interested us much to meet with such an old friend
far in the unknown heart of Africa.
The taxes are very heavy. The State takes a third of a man's
total earnings, and the priesthood about five per cent on the
remainder. But on the other hand, if a man through any cause
falls into bona fide misfortune the State supports him in the
position of life to which he belongs. If he is idle, however,
he is sent to work on the Government undertakings, and the State
looks after his wives and children. The State also makes all
the roads and builds all town houses, about which great care
is shown, letting them out to families at a small rent. It also
keeps up a standing army of about twenty thousand men, and provides
watchmen, etc. In return for their five per cent the priests
attend to the service of the temples, carry out all religious
ceremonies, and keep schools, where they teach whatever they
think desirable, which is not very much. Some of the temples
also possess private property, but priests as individuals cannot
hold property.
And now comes a question which I find some difficulty in answering.
Are the Zu-Vendi a civilized or barbarous people? Sometimes
I think the one, sometimes the other. In some branches of art
they have attained the very highest proficiency. Take for instance
their buildings and their statuary. I do not think that the
latter can be equalled either in beauty or imaginative power
anywhere in the world, and as for the former it may have been
rivalled in ancient Egypt, but I am sure that it has never been
since. But, on the other hand, they are totally ignorant of
many other arts. Till Sir Henry, who happened to know something
about it, showed them how to do it by mixing silica and lime,
they could not make a piece of glass, and their crockery is rather
primitive. A water-clock is their nearest approach to a watch;
indeed, ours delighted them exceedingly. They know nothing about
steam, electricity, or gunpowder, and mercifully for themselves
nothing about printing or the penny post. Thus they are spared
many evils, for of a truth our age has learnt the wisdom of the
old-world saying, 'He who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.'
As regards their religion, it is a natural one for imaginative
people who know no better, and might therefore be expected to
turn to the sun and worship him as the all-Father, but it cannot
justly be called elevating or spiritual. It is true that they
do sometimes speak of the sun as the 'garment of the Spirit',
but it is a vague term, and what they really adore is the fiery
orb himself. They also call him the 'hope of eternity', but
here again the meaning is vague, and I doubt if the phrase conveys
any very clear impression to their minds. Some of them do indeed
believe in a future life for the good -- I know Nyleptha does
firmly -- but it is a private faith arising from the promptings
of the spirit, not an essential of their creed. So on the whole
I cannot say that I consider this sun-worship as a religion indicative
of a civilized people, however magnificent and imposing its ritual,
or however moral and high-sounding the maxims of its priests,
many of whom, I am sure, have their own opinions on the whole
subject; though of course they have nothing but praise for a
system which provides them with so many of the good things of
this world.
There are now only two more matters to which I need allude --
namely, the language and the system of calligraphy. As for
the former, it is soft-sounding, and very rich and flexible.
Sir Henry says that it sounds something like modern Greek,
but of course it has no connection with it. It is easy to acquire,
being simple in its construction, and a peculiar quality about it
is its euphony, and the way in which the sound of the words
adapts itself to the meaning to be expressed. Long before
we mastered the language, we could frequently make out what
was meant by the ring of the sentence. It is on this account
that the language lends itself so well to poetical declamation,
of which these remarkable people are very fond. The Zu-Vendi
alphabet seems, Sir henry says, to be derived, like every other
known system of letters, from a Phoenician source, and therefore
more remotely still from the ancient Egyptian hieratic writing.
Whether this is a fact I cannot say, not being learned in such
matters. All I know about it is that their alphabet consists
of twenty-two characters, of which a few, notably B, E, and O,
are not very unlike our own. The whole affair is, however, clumsy
and puzzling. {Endnote 13} But as the people of Zu-Vendi are
not given to the writing of novels, or of anything except business
documents and records of the briefest character, it answers their
purpose well enough.
