We carry our own food, chiefly tinned things, with us, and at convenient outspans (when we are changing mules) we boil our kettle and have a meal of sorts and thoroughly enjoy it—especially the evening meal, under the stars.
1st June.—Reached Tati Gold Fields, 1 a. m. A collection of three or four tin stores, one of them an hotel, where we rolled into bed for a short rest.
We breakfasted with Mr. Vigers, the Resident Commissioner. Tati is a British Protectorate of older standing than the Chartered Company, and independent of it. It has its own administrative machinery,—a mining population of whites and blacks and “wasters,” and yet not a single policeman! “Wasters?”—oh, it’s a South African word, and most expressive; applies to the specious loafer who is so common in this country,—the country teems with him in high grades as well as low, hinc multæ lacrimæ in the history of South African enterprises.
Twenty miles beyond Tati we crossed the dry bed of the Ramakan River, the border of Matabeleland. Close by the river stands the ruin of a “prehistoric” fort, built of trimmed stones. There are several similar forts about the country, offshoots of the famed Zimbabye ruins near Victoria.
We nearly killed our General to–day in crossing a dry river bed. The descent into the drift was so steep that the wheelers could not hold back the coach, so our drivers sent them down it at a gallop. Half–way down there was a sill of rock off which the coach took a flying leap into the sand below. We inside were chucked about like peanuts in a pot, and Sir Frederick was thrown against the roof and his head and neck were stiff for some time afterward.
Had dinner (!) at a roadside shanty “Hotel,” where the waiter smoked while he served us.
2nd June.—Signs of war and of colonisation at last. We reached Mangwe, 6.30 a. m. An earthwork fort with a waggon encampment outside it. In this laager were all the women and children, chiefly Dutch, from farms around; the men acting as garrison under command of Van Rooyen and Lee,—two well–known hunters, who were here in Lobengula’s time.
In the fort they showed with pride some half a dozen Matabele prisoners they had captured in a fight. I looked well at them, fearing that they might be the only enemy that I should see. Happily I might have spared my eyes.
We now went through the Mangwe Pass. The road here winds its way through a tract of rocky hills and koppies, which are practically the tail of the Matopo range, running eastward hence for sixty miles. It would have been a nasty place to tackle had the Matabele held it. They might easily here have cut off Buluwayo from the outer world, but their M’limo, or oracle, had told them to leave this one road open as a bolt–hole for the whites in Matabeleland. They had expected that when the rebellion broke out, the whites would avail themselves en masse of this line of escape; they never reckoned that instead they would sit tight and strike out hard until more came crowding up the road to their assistance.