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.