Chapter Twenty Three.
Mashona and Matabeleland continued, with notes on the country and people, which is within the Zambese basin.
When I arrived at Umkano kraal on the 30th December, it was Sunday; when I had drawn up my waggon in a nice snug nook to be away from the native kraals, and outspanned, it was 4 p.m. Dinner was soon prepared and despatched, and then I sent my two warrior guards to the king to announce my arrival, and that I would call on his majesty to-morrow. A short distance from my camp, four waggons were drawn up abreast, no one to be seen, except a white lady sitting on the waggon-box of one of them. I therefore lost no time in going over, and found it was Mrs Sykes, wife of the Rev. Mr Sykes of Inyatine, who was then holding service in an adjoining hut to a few natives. The other waggons belonged to the Rev. Mr Coillard of the French Missionary Society, in Basutoland, who had come up to Matabeleland to endeavour to found a few native mission stations; and instead of coming up by the main transport road and reporting himself in the usual way, he passed through the Transvaal, crossed the Limpopo at Zoutpans drift, and entered the Mashona country as it were by the back door, and as he travelled north, he was seen to pick a few flowers, which was reported to Lo-Bengulu, when he sent immediately eighty of his warriors to bring him and his belongings prisoners to this station, and he arrived the day previous to my arrival. This brought Mr Sykes over from Inyatine to intercede and get him released, as also his waggons, wife, and wife’s sister, who were accompanying him; a rather dangerous journey for two ladies, when the husband had never been in before and knew not the country, to go exploring unknown regions, and it was a great surprise to us all that they came out safe. When gaining all this information from Mrs Sykes, the gentleman himself, his wife and sister came strolling in from a ramble, when we all made ourselves comfortable round Mrs Sykes’ waggon to enjoy a cup of tea, the most refreshing drink in a climate like this, thermometer standing at 92 degrees at six o’clock in the evening, and a cloudless sky. Mr Sykes soon joined us after the conclusion of his service. When Europeans meet in a region so remote as this from civilisation, surrounded by savage tribes, naked as when they were born, and as wild as nature can make them, knowing no law but that of their king, who rules at the point of his assagai, we at once become brothers and sisters, and friendship is then and there established; so it was with us, chatting and talking as if we had been old and dear friends. It is true, I had known Mr and Mrs Sykes a long time, when I first met them in 1867, and afterwards. Having spent a pleasant evening listening to Mr Coillard’s account of his adventures through that wild region, I returned to waggon and to bed at 10 p.m.; a calm hot night, flies by the million, mosquitoes by the thousand round my waggon. At all Kaffir stations it is the same; the cattle kraals breed the flies, and the water the mosquitoes. At the present time the water is so full of them, that it has to be strained through a piece of muslin before being used.
Mr Fairbourne from Gubuluwayo came in the evening to tell me that Lo-Bengulu intends leaving this station for Gubuluwayo to-morrow, as his great military dance comes off on Tuesday. He informed us all that the party at Ujiji had been laid up with the fever, except the Rev. Mr Price, and some had died. Most of them we all knew. Lo-Bengulu and his Indunas will not allow any white men in the country through which Mr Coillard proposed going, as they state, “If we permit them to reside there, where are we, the Matabele people, to go to, to get cattle and slaves?”—in other words, to rob the Mashona people of their property and cattle; if not peaceable, to slaughter them, take the young children as slaves, and bring them up to incorporate them in the army.
Early on Monday morning, Mr Phillips, old John Viljuen, and Mr Frewen rode over. The latter was going further in, and had proceeded some distance, when he was obliged to turn and come on to this station, and left this morning on his way down country, my two guards returning to Makobis with him.
Height of this station by aneroid barometer, 4970 feet above sea-level. The country round is well-wooded, but the trees are small. 20 degrees 25 minutes South latitude, 28 degrees 35 minutes East longitude.
I went to call on Lo-Bengulu; he was sitting on his waggon-box naked, all but his cat-tail kilt. After shaking hands and passing the compliments of the day, I told him, as he expected one of his regiments over to escort him to the military kraal, I would defer my talk with him until after the grand dance. He asked me to follow him when he started; that meant, I was to fall in with the other waggons of the white people composing the cavalcade.
We started about 11 a.m., Mr Sykes taking the lead behind the king’s waggons, which were surrounded by about twenty Zulu women and girls. One waggon held his sister Nina and the Kaffir beer; next followed Mr Coillard and his waggons, then my waggon, Phillips, Viljuen, and other white men on horseback, and about a hundred of the king’s body guard, about as unique a turn-out as one could desire to see—an African king on his travels—it would have graced Regent street.
After a seven-mile trek, we outspanned for the day at a small kraal, on the road to the military camp—as a messenger had been sent to say five regiments would be sent out the next morning, inviting the king home, being the usual custom on the king returning after a long absence; therefore we selected a suitable place to remain the night, away from the crowd of blacks, and made ourselves comfortable the remainder of the day.
Tuesday, January 1st, 1878.—A lovely bright morning. Thermometer at 9 a.m., 87 degrees. After breakfast the Matabele regiments came over, some four hundred, dressed in their war dress, black ostrich feathers for head-dress, a tippet and epaulets of the same, tigers’-tails in profusion round the loins and hanging down to the ground behind, with anklets of the shell of a fruit the size of an egg, with stones inside to make them jingle as they move their feet; armed with shield and several assagais. So they came on, singing their war songs, jumping up, striking their shields. With their black skins, white teeth, and the white part of their eyes, they were fit representations of imps issuing from a certain place known to the wicked. On arriving at the king’s waggon, where the king was sitting on his waggon-box, they went through a kind of dance, singing the king’s praise, Lo-Bengulu quietly looking on. The king’s wives, between thirty and forty, dressed only in black kilts down below the knee, open in front; the kilt is made of black sheep or goat-skin; some, I think, are made of otter-skin; others had mantles of the same; several had their heads shaved; many cut quite close. After the dance, we all inspanned, and followed the king’s waggons in the same order as yesterday; until we arrived at Gubuluwayo, the military kraal. I took my waggon and outspanned alongside of Mr Wood’s waggons, on the opposite rise to the kraal, to be free from the people, and have some peace; and remained the day. All round the kraal is open, every available piece of ground is under the hoe.