KAFFIR TELEGRAPHY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—About ten years ago I had a very startling personal experience of what, in lieu of a better name, I call Kaffir telepathy. Not being able to obtain corroborative testimony, I never made the story public ; but it attracted my attention to numerous similar stories recurring in this country, of which I made careful notes as they came under my notice. During the period that has elapsed I have heard about fifty good stories, and have been able to submit nineteen of them to a rigorous investigation. The results may be of interest, as I believe I am the only person in South Africa who has systematically examined such cases. By Kaffir telegraphy or telepathy I mean the transmission of an item of news over a distance and in a time impossible by any known means of com- munication. In the nineteen cases I investigated I applied the following test conditions :—(1) That the news received should have been known to at least two white persons; (2) that the distance traversed could not have been covered in double the time given ; (3) that the news and the event recorded coincided accurately. By double time I mean this :—Supposing the event occurred at 9 a.m., and the distance to which the news was conveyed could be covered by a fast horse by 1 p.m., I required, before accepting the story, that it should have been known at its objective point before 11 a.m. The nineteen stories amply fulfilled all these conditions. Eight I rejected on the ground that they came within the scope of guesswork or judgment, being what a sporting man would describe as "even-money chances." Of such are the results of native trials. The Kaffirs take profound interest in cases in which their friends and relations are concerned ; but as the issue is only "guilty or not guilty," and the penalty uniform, the verdict can often be anticipated. To this class belong several cases I noted arising out of the recent war. For example, we heard through Kaffirs in this remote and roadless district of Natal, within two hours of the event, that the Boers had reached Mooi River, seventy-five miles away. From the same source we
heard of Buller's defeat at Colenso, sixty miles away, only two hours afterwards. But both these "projections" were within range of shrewd forecast, and I therefore wrote them off. A further process of elimination disposed of three otherwise striking stories on the ground that the transmitted version varied slightly from the original. Of the six remaining I can give but two, the others being too long for the compass of a brief letter. These two I consider are as perfect as such stories could be, for the multiplicity of detail and the accidental character of both preclude the elements of foreknowledge or coincidence. Full names and details are at the disposal of those interested :—
Case 1.—At 9 a.m. on a Monday, a Kaffir herd-boy was attacked by a bull. He defended himself with a crowbar. Kaffir and bull were dead by 10 a.m. At 12 the same day B, a farmer residing forty-two miles from the scene of the tragedy, wrote to A a business letter, appending this postscript:—" My Kaffirs are saying your herd-boy stabbed your red Devon bull with a long knife and that both are dead. Hope it is only a Kaffir yam." That letter was despatched by mounted messenger before half past 12 the same day."
Case 2.—A Kaffir was being tried for manslaughter at Johannes- burg. At 5 in the afternoon an old Kaffir woman on a Boer's farm thirty-eight miles from Johannesburg told me and others that the boy had been acquitted, and that the principal witness against him had been taken to prison. As the Kaffir had pleaded guilty at the preliminary hearing and was to be undefended, this result seemed extremely improbable. Later we learned that the Kaffir was given counsel at the last moment, the plea of guilty withdrawn, and he was acquitted at 3.15 p.m. At 4 o'clock that afternoon the principal witness was knocked down by a cab in the street and taken to the jail hospital, where he died.
In each of these cases the accurate news travelled in less than half the time that would have been required by the fastest horse, bearing in mind the broken, almost virgin, and roadless country that would have to be traversed. There are many such cases known to South Africans. The explanation offefed—always by Europeans, never by Colonials and those who know the country—is that the news is shouted from kraal to kraal or from hill to hill. It is true that news is sometimes conveyed this way, but the sparsely peopled character of the country renders it absolutely impossible that an item of news could be conveyed twenty miles by shouting without careful prearrangement. I have ascertained by repeated experiments that under perfect atmosphere and geographical conditions some robust Kaffirs can make themselves understood at two miles distant; but it required eight attempts to get a message of two items so conveyed. Let it be granted that two miles is the normal distance a Kaffir can throw his voice. In order to shout the news as recorded in my first story, we have to imagine the fortuitous and coincident appearance in the desolate veld of twenty strong-voiced Kaffirs, all at the precise necessary distances, all at the psychological moment, and, more fortunately still, all in a line with the point to which the news is to be pro- jected! And this in a country where one may ride fifty miles without seeing a Kaffir or exen a kraal! I have asked scores of farmers and others whose lives are spent among natives whether they have ever come upon such a human telegraph, but the invariable answer is "No," but they have read of it in books written in England. That news is sometimes trans- mitted under conditions unknown to Europeans is, I am satisfied, a fact; but the explanation lies neither in the legs of a horse nor the lungs of a Kaffir.—I am, Sir, &c., DOUGLAS BLACKBURN.
Loteni, via Fort Nottingham, Natal.
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