The Matabele Campaign

2nd December.– On the road at last. Although Salisbury has its charms as a dwelling–place, we were getting a bit anxious to be nearer the coast, and this afternoon we started with our three waggons and Cape cart and our riding horses.

Our last and least pleasing item in Salisbury was the hotel bill – for twelve days – five of us —£258. Board and lodging being two guineas a day, exclusive of drink, which is at the rate of 3s. for a whisky and soda. Eggs had touched 47s. a dozen. Ducks are still at 30s. each. Flour £7, 10s. per 100 lbs. Tinned meat 2s. 3d. per lb. Fresh mutton 4s. 6d. per lb.

However, in spite of siege scarcity, I must say our manager, Rosenthal, did us wonderfully well. He contrived to give us eggs and bacon, omelets and fresh vegetables, cooked by a French chef, so we could not complain.

When we had outspanned near Ballyhooley (a place almost as pretty as its original in Ireland), and had just finished dinner, Lord Grey arrived there too, ahead of his waggons, with Lady Grey and Lady Victoria, and Howard, and they came and dined with us, pending arrival of their outfit. The ladies are bound for Beira, and for the ship that we hope to go in.

3rd December.– This Mashonaland is far prettier than Matabeleland, in some places beautiful, and very green after the recent rainstorms.

The wayside stores and inns, having been three years longer in existence than those in Matabeleland, are far more complete, well–built and home–like, with some flower gardens, farmyards, pig–styes, dove–cotes, etc. etc. – but all looted and empty, with recent graves and rough crosses near them.

4th December.– The country now is all green, wooded with rocky, bushy ridges and frequent tumbled–up granite koppies (some quite fantastic), and water in the streams.

My horse, the sole survivor of four, is picking up flesh rapidly with good grazing and corn, and being well looked after by a soldier servant whom I have got from the Irish company of the mounted infantry. This man, M’Grath, pleased me this morning by describing the horse as a “tedious feeder” (pronounced in the richest brogue) – meaning he was slow in eating his corn.

I gave up the horse this day in favour of the bike, and had a most enjoyable ride. Bikes have been issued to the police to use in place of horses, as the latter are hard to feed, and die in large numbers every year of horse sickness. But I think they ought to have tandem bikes, – not single ones, – because police should always go in pairs on long patrols. On a tandem one man can watch the ground and steer, while the other can look about for enemies and can use his revolver – which cannot be done by single bikers.

5th December.– We passed the mounted infantry and the wounded going down from Salisbury to the coast, and met the men for the new police force just coming up. A large number of them are Australians – a very fine–looking lot of young fellows.

This would make a grand country for colonising. Judging from the few families we have seen, the locally–born children are as healthy and well–grown as you could wish. The great want in the town is that of cooks and domestic servants. With a good supply of these would follow much marrying and settling down on the part of many of the young prospectors, police, and farmers, who at present pour all their earnings into the hands of canteen–keepers. It is a pity that some system of importing a good class of women domestic servants is not tried, similar to that employed in Canada.

At Marendellas (fifty–one miles from Salisbury) we passed one of the fortified road posts, where we saw the graves of poor Evans, Barnes, and Morris, and of several men, all killed in action in the neighbourhood. At Headlands (eighty–eight miles) and Fort Haynes (a hundred and five miles), similar forts, were more such graves, including that of Captain Haynes, R.E., and others killed in the attack on Makoni’s.

Near Fort Haynes were said to be some ancient ruins – so we rode over to see them. There were the remains of an old kraal, strongly fortified with a circular stone wall, a wide ditch, and a triple circle of trees which are now very big. It was certainly an ancient ruin, but not of the class of the Zimbabye ruins near Victoria. The General even said he had seen better stone walls in the Cotswold country. But in a neighbouring koppie, which was the burial–place of Makoni’s father, – and a very sacred place with the natives, – we found a bit of wall made of square–cut stones neatly fitted together, much more like the Zimbabye style. The rocks within this wall formed some natural circular enclosures; one rock stood up on end, and several of them were pock–marked. I don’t think that Bent mentions whether the stones at Zimbabye are also pock–marked, but Ross, the Native Commissioner with us, said they were. Well! the Phœnician temple at Hadjiar–Kim in Malta, and the Giants’ Tower in Gozo, both contain pock–marked stones and rocks. These are supposed to be artificially worked to represent the firmament. Perhaps this should be another clue as to who were the builders of Zimbabye and other prehistoric ruins in Mashonaland, since they seem to have treated pock–marked stones as sacred.

Taberer, Chief Native Commissioner, who was with us, attributes the fortified kraals to the Vorosi people, who inhabited the country before the Mashonas, and have now disappeared northwards. They are a far cleverer race than most South African natives. The rock drawing’s in Mashonaland generally attributed to Bushmen, he says, are by them, and are superior to the usual Bushmen drawings.

7th December.– We got into broken, mountainous, and bushy country, and descended the Devil’s Pass, a hundred and seventeen miles from Salisbury a long descent among granite koppies and shady woods. A lion had been seen on the road the previous day here, but we saw nothing, though we used all our eyes. I biked the afternoon trek, and got thoroughly drenched by a downpour in doing so. Next day I went to look for lions in most liony–looking country, but only saw one solitary steinbuck – which I shot.

9th December.– Umtali at last! A small town in a green basin among the mountains. A pretty, but dull place. “A fair field and no favour” is the reception with which Sir Wilfred Lawson would meet were he to come here. The surrounding greenery and its backing of wooded hills remind one of beautiful Sierra Leone. And, if the fever fiend be absent, still the drink fiend is there in his place.

Although we found rooms engaged for us at one of the hotels, we prepared to camp just outside the town. And we certainly are most comfortable in camp. The General lives in my little Cabul tent, and we other four fill a bell–tent. Our dining–room is a space between two waggons, roofed in with a roomy “buck–sail.” Our table is a door laid on a trestle bedstead from a looted farm. And when we dine, we might imagine ourselves in a room, did not the lanterns light up in strong relief the massive wheels and under–carriages of the waggons on either side of us. Our conversation, too, is nearly drowned by the crunching of the mules feeding at their manger, which is hung along the dissel–boom (pole), and he who sits at the head of the table stands a good chance of being landed by a kick which he is well within reach of.

To–night we had to dinner “Maori” B., who was with me with the Native Levy in Zululand in 1888. Celebrated over Africa for his yarns of fighting and adventure. Originally of a fine old Irish family – arrested, while a schoolboy from Cheltenham on his way to shoot at Wimbledon, on suspicion of being a Fenian; enlisted as a gunner; blew up his father with a squib cigar; shot his man in a duel in Germany; biked into the Lake of Geneva; went to New Zealand, where for twelve years he fought the Maoris; ate a child when starving; and afterwards hunted the bushrangers in Australia; took a schooner in search of a copper island, or anything else of value; next, a Papal Zouave; under Colonel Dodge, in America, he fought the Sioux. When with Pullein’s corps in South Africa, his men shot at him while bathing; he beat them with an ox–yoke; they stole an ostrich and hid it; a row among themselves followed, begun by a Kentish navvy, who complained he did not get his fair share of the “duck.” B. denies that in the Maori war the Maoris displayed a flag of truce for more ammunition, but to ask the troops to stop firing shells into town, so as to let them have water – “else how can you expect us to fight?” they said. Then he became gold–digger; later, fought in the Galeka war, then the Zulu, Dinizulu, first Matabele campaigns, and lastly the present operations, in which he is a major in the Umtali forces.

10th December.– The General and our party went out to the Pennalonga Mine, seven miles through pretty wooded hills, every one of which showed signs of having been prospected. At the mine, Jeffreys, the manager, and his bright bride did us right hospitably, and after lunch we went over part of the mine. Their working is simple: having found the reef in a watercourse in the mountain–side, they have followed it with “drives” both ways, and have met it with other drives from the opposite side of the hill. The ore (of “gallina”) containing something much over 20 oz. of silver and 11 dwt. of gold, a lot of it very pretty with the garnet–like crystals of chromate of lead. We walked into one adit about four hundred feet, and saw the working; cross–cuts showed the reef eighteen feet across. The air was not very good, and we could with great difficulty keep our candles alight.

They have just put up a 5–stamp battery to be worked with a turbine, the water being led from the top of the mountain above the mill by pipes which are now being laid, so that in a short time the mine should be in full work. The only obstruction at present is the famine price of food, which prevents the Company employing sufficient black labour (which they have to feed).

There are several other mines in the valley, but none so forward as this, though one has a splendid waterfall to supply its power in the future.

We saw some gold–washing done as the prospectors do it. With a pestle and mortar the quartz is crushed to powder, and then washed in water in a shallow pan (which has a tip in it for the use of unskilful washers, for washing is a knack).

The liquid mud is then swirled around and shaken, so that the heavier ingredients work to the bottom of the sediment, and the waste is poured off. As this in its turn gets washed out with fresh water, a little “tailing” of yellow dust is seen at the edges of the sediment, which is then washed out till nothing is left in the pan but the thin little streak of gold dust. If 8 dwts. of this can be extracted from a ton of ore, it will be sufficient to repay expenses of mining.

15th December.– Packed up our kits and started on our last trek, from Umtali to the coast. Umtali itself is very pretty, but when five miles from there we came to the top of Christmas Pass, and began to descend, we had splendid view of grand, rolling mountains, with wide, rich valleys and wooded hills.

We crossed the site of New Umtali, whither Umtali is to be moved to be on the railway line. (While we were at Umtali, the inhabitants came to claim compensation from Rhodes. Of course he had some new way of meeting the difficulty. It was reported that he took each man in turn, got at his price, and by the afternoon had bought Umtali as it stood for £40,000.)

At New Umtali I spotted such a site for a house! – with a view in front of it that will make me yearn that way for a good long time to come.

Our road went down and down (splendid run had one been on a bike; the whole distance, Umtali to Chimoio, has been done in nine hours on a bike), diving down into deep, dark valleys between thickly wooded hills, then through forest plains, with peeps between the trees of great blue mountains looming high on either side.

Frequent along the road are inns – clean and neat, all kept by Englishmen – in thatched wattle and daub huts.

At Massi Kessi (alias Macequece) we got into Portuguese territory. Massi Kessi was the place where the Chartered Company’s forces (consisting of thirty–three men) were attacked by the Portuguese to the number of seven hundred (five hundred of them native troops). A few volleys and rounds of case–shot from the British sufficed to drive back the enemy; and their officers, unable to rally the men, stood on one side and surrendered. The British force then went on to the fort – a very strong place from which the Portuguese had sallied – and took it with all its contents. These included the flag (which had been left flying in the hurried departure of the garrison), some guns, machine guns, and mess furniture, which are still in use with the Chartered Company’s forces. That Massi Kessi has since been replaced by the present township, eight miles from it.

This is a township of one square of about fifteen houses altogether, of which one is the Government House, and twelve are drinking bars. In Rhodesia liquor is not allowed to be sold to coloured men, but in Portuguese territory there is no restriction; consequently all our drivers (seven) and those of Mr. Rhodes’ and Lord Grey’s waggon, which were with us, all got more or less drunk – most of them more. They had saved up their pay in anticipation of this occasion. I was not sorry to hear that two of them, having got hopelessly incapable, were robbed of £30 by the liquor–seller. We had to adopt strong measures with our own hands the next two nights to keep their fighting and noise within tolerable bounds in camp.

17th December.– At the Revuwe River and hut hotel we were overtaken by Cecil Rhodes, Sir Charles Metcalfe, and others, also travelling to the coast.

Rhodes had asked us to stay at his beautiful old place near Cape Town, Groot Schur, but when he met us this morning, he said, “I am sorry to find that I shall not be able to give you accommodation at my house. It has been burnt to the ground. It is a great pity, because there were some old things there that could not be replaced. I liked my house. Providence has not been kind to me this year: what with Jameson’s raid, rinderpest, rebellion, famine, and now my house burnt, I feel rather like Job, but, thank God, I haven’t had sores yet. Still, there remains some of the year, and there is yet a chance for me to develop some totally new kind of boil. That would be the height of evils, to have a boil called after one. Fancy being inventor of the Rhodes boil!” And then he sent a telegram: “Having heard indirectly that my house has been burnt, please put up tents in the garden, as I don’t want to live at an hotel.”

Our last trek, eight miles to–day, brought us to the railway. It was a delight to come on an embankment with its rails and telegraph in the midst of wildest–looking bush – and then to hear the shriek of the engine as an empty train came rumbling up to fetch us to the coast. All that night and up to four o’clock next day we rattled along through the bush, at first among small hills, latterly over the flats – all the time in deep, soggy heat. How one longed for a breeze – and when it came, how disappointing it was – like hot eider–down pressing against one. At times in the thicker bush one could well imagine oneself on the new railway in Ashanti.

18th December.– Early in the morning, about four, a hurried whistling of the engine and much jabbering of our nigger servants in the baggage truck apprised us that three lions were calmly walking along the line in front of us, thinking the road had been made especially for them. They deigned to make way for the beast that breathed flame and smoke, and they skipped off into the jungle. A month ago a prospector named Brown was killed by lions while walking along the line here.

Now and again we pass camps of railway men, a white overseer’s tent, with a few straw huts of native labourers; and once or twice small stations where up and down trains pass each other, and travellers can get food; but we had no need to avail ourselves of them, for our train was full (too full for comfort) of railway officials and others, each of whom had brought a box of food, chiefly champagne, beer, and sandwiches; and at odd hours of night as well as day one thirsty soul or another would get at his box, break bulk, and wake up everybody to have a snack. They meant well, but eternal champagne and beef, especially at 5 a. m., when one would have given worlds for a cup of tea or coffee and some bread and butter – it was cloying, to say the least.

Fever was evident everywhere. At one station the telegraph clerk handed us in some perfectly illegible and nonsensical telegrams. He was half–unconscious with fever, and we never discovered who were the senders or what the purport of these messages. We had to change engines, as our driver had an attack of fever. At a new bridge five out of eleven white men were down.

At Fontes Villa, a little town built on piles, at present the railway headquarters, we déjeûnered with the manager of the line in a beautifully green verandah. Such fruit! mangoes, bananas, grenadillas, limes, and pineapples. Thermometer 115° in the shade.

Smart, gentlemanly young fellows acting in all the lower as well as upper railway capacities, but with lots of life and lots of death, for Fontes Villa possesses two cemeteries – one, the “old” one (three years old), being full, the new one had been made nearer to the station, to be more “handy,” and this one also looks like being full very soon.

About twenty miles farther on, somebody spied the masts of a ship above the bush, and soon we ran into the station at Beira.

Beira is a long town of about 1500 inhabitants, the houses built along a spit of sand for two miles between the sea and a mangrove creek. With good wharf, storehouses, a tile–roofed hospital, and a curiosity in a great square red and white lighthouse, substantial–looking, but on close inspection showing itself to be of corrugated iron, painted.

We did not wait to look at these, but got ourselves and baggage transferred without delay to the s. s. Pongola, lying off the shore in the mouth of the Pungwe River. The Pungwe here opens from its flat mangrove banks into an estuary some ten miles across.

After dinner (which happily was laid on deck, after the manner of the Florio–Rubbatino ships in the Mediterranean), the General, Rhodes, Sir Charles Metcalfe, and I went ashore to call on Colonel Machado, the Portuguese commandant. We found him a handsome, clever–looking man of forty–five, speaking English well, and full of knowledge of the country, and very friendly; but his house was mighty hot, and we were glad to get back into our homeward car in the open air.

The roads in Beira are of deep soft sand by nature, but their imperfections had been got over by art. A little tram line runs along the main street, with offshoots to all the by–roads. Public and private tram–cars, holding four persons each, run along the rail, propelled by shoving niggers.

19th December.– After a general farewell visit of friends from the shore, we got under way at 10 a. m.

How good it is to feel the first few heaves of the screw as the ship is being turned in the yellow tide to set her head for home!

We steamed out through the seventeen miles of sandbanks that form the mouth of the Pungwe and Busi Rivers. We stuck for half an hour on one shoal, but floated off with the rising tide, and soon dropped the low flat shore of Beira out of sight.

22nd December.– Passed along the coast of Zululand in the morning, seeing familiar spots like Etschowe (Signal Hill), the Tugela, and finally reached Durban – steaming boldly into the harbour and alongside the wharf, where ships were moored two deep. At Durban we landed the troops, and spent four hours.

How the place has grown since I was here seven years ago! The long road from the Point to the town is lined with villas and gardens in place of sandhills and shanties. The streets are full of bustling people – English ladies, carriages, tram–cars, and ‘rickshaws’. The latter in swarms, with Zulu runners dressed up in war headdresses and with rattles on their legs, “playing at horses” as they run, great children that they are – tossing their plumes and stepping up to their noses.

Saw old Reuben Beningfield, and had happy reminders of old shooting days with him; Little, 9th Lancers, and Sir Walter Hely Hutchinson, the Governor, and Jameson, who does not alter one jot, and many other friends. At six we sailed again for Port Elizabeth.

After this brief flash of life in civilisation we are once more getting along, butting against obstructive wave power, and pressing into the darkling haze.