Our lodging was next door to the club buildings, now used as a barrack for Grey’s Scouts, and defended with a small bastion of tin biscuit–cases and sacks filled with earth. By breakfast–time I had investigated Buluwayo.
A red earth flat laid out by ditches, in blocks and streets, over two miles long and half a mile wide. The centre portion of the town well filled with buildings, all single–storeyed, some brick, some tin, some “paper” (i.e. wire–wove, ready–made in England, sent out in pieces), all with verandahs. The more outlying blocks only boasting a house or shanty here and there. Most of the houses built with a view to ultimate extension; e.g. one consisted of, evidently, the scullery, back kitchen, and “offices,” the front to be added later, when better times came round. The gardens, streets, and vacant lots richly sown with broken bottles, meat tins, rags, and paper; scarcely a garden, shrub, or tree in th place. The houses generally, if they are not “Bottle stores” (i.e. public–houses), are either dry–goods stores or mining syndicate offices. Everywhere enterprise and rough elements of civilisation,—not forgetting the liquor branch.
Half a mile southward of the town lies a bush–covered rising ground, on which are a good number of “villas,” with their two or three acres of bush fenced in to form their gardens in the future. At present they are deserted, the owners living in town while the Matabele are about.
In the centre of the town is the market square with its market house—a big brick building which is now used as the main refuge and defence of the town. Round the market house is drawn up a rectangular laager of waggons, built up with sacks full of earth to form a bullet–proof wall. Outside the laager the ground for twenty or thirty yards is rendered impassable by means of “entanglements” of barbed wire and a fence of the same, as well as by a thick sprinkling of broken bottles all over the ground itself.
Up on the roof of the hall is a look–out turret, from which, by touching a button, an observer can at will fire any of the electric mines which have been laid in the various approaches to the market square.
Although most of the people who have houses in Buluwayo are now living in their homes again, there are numbers of families from suburban or outlying farms who are still living in the laager. And at the western end of the town is another smaller laager of waggons round a house, in which a number of Boer farmers, with their families, are living.
We had a very nice house “commandeered” (i.e. taken over by Government at a fair rental), and handed over to us for our use as a dwelling–house, ready supplied with furniture, etc.; and then the offices of one of the gold–mining companies were similarly commandeered and assigned to us for offices. In a very short time we had settled down and were hard at work—and there was lots to do.
Of course our first business was to interview all the heads of affairs, and so to form an idea of the situation.
Sir Richard Martin (with whom I had served previously, when on the mission to Swaziland, under Sir F. de Winton) is Deputy Commissioner, appointed since Jameson’s raid to regulate the use and moves of the armed forces in the Chartered Company’s territories, so as to prevent any further adventurous departures on their part. Lord Grey is Administrator of the Government of the whole country of Rhodesia, which includes Matabeleland and Mashonaland, etc.—a tract of country 750,000 square miles in extent, or equal to Spain, France, and Italy together. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, while bearing no official position, practically represents the management of the country as well as of the Company, and his advice and experience are of the greatest value, since all the other “heads” are new arrivals in the country. And it is in this number of heads that our danger would apparently, and our difficulty will most certainly be. Virtually, of course, the General is the head while active operations are in progress, but he has to cut his cloth according to the style approved by the Deputy Commissioner, according to the expense sanctioned by the Administrator, and according to the general design required by the High Commissioner, while not totally disregarding the local experience of Mr. Rhodes and others. Altogether, the principle of strategy, which directs that “the General in command should merely have his objective pointed out to him, and a free hand given him,” seems to be pretty well trenched upon by the present arrangement, though, under the circumstances, it could not well be helped. This, however, has always been the case in the history of South African warfare,—frequently with fatal results,—so it is nothing new: the only thing is to make the best of it, and pull together as much as possible.