narrative. The Kafir races have produced within this century three
really remarkable men--men who, like Toussaint l'Ouverture in Hayti, and
Kamehameha I. in Hawaii, will go down in history as instances of the
gifts that sometimes show themselves even among the most backward races.
Tshaka, the Zulu, was a warrior of extraordinary energy and ambition,
whose power of organization enabled him to raise the Zulu army within a
few years to a perfection of drill and discipline and a swiftness of
movement which made them irresistible, except by Europeans. Khama, the
chief who still reigns among the Bechuanas, has been a social reformer
and administrator of judgment, tact, and firmness, who has kept his
people in domestic peace and protected them from the dangerous
influences which white civilization brings with it, while at the same
time helping them onward toward such improvements as their character
admits. Moshesh, chief of the Basutos, was born in the end of the
eighteenth century. He belonged to a small clan which had suffered
severely in the wars caused by the conquest of Tshaka, whose attacks
upon the tribes nearest him had driven them upon other tribes, and
brought slaughter and confusion upon the whole of South-eastern Africa.
Though only a younger son, his enterprise and courage soon made him a
leader. The progress of his power was aided by the skill he showed in
selecting for his residence and stronghold a flat topped hill called
Thaba Bosiyo, fenced round by cliffs, with pasture for his cattle, and
several springs of water. In this impregnable stronghold, from which he
drew his title of "chief of the mountain," he resisted repeated sieges
by his native enemies and by the emigrant Boers. The exploits of Moshesh
against his native foes soon brought adherents round him, and he became
the head of that powerful tribe, largely formed out of the fragments of
other tribes scattered and shattered by war, which is now called the
Basuto. Unlike most Kafir warriors, he was singularly free from
cruelty, and ruled his own people with a mildness which made him liked
as well as respected. In 1832 he had the foresight to invite
missionaries to come and settle among his people, and the following year
saw the establishment of the mission of the Evangelical Society of
Paris, whose members, some of them French, some Swiss, a few Scotch,
have been the most potent factors in the subsequent history of the
Basuto nation. When the inevitable c