It is now held by an impi of about a thousand Matabele. Their outposts, in talking with some of Mapisa’s spies (they shout to each other at a safe distance across a valley), have said that they mean to draw the white troops on when they come to attack them, till they have got them well inside the gorge under the mountain, and then to “give them snuff.”
[P.S.—A month later, as will presently be seen, they tried this on with Laing’s and Nicholson’s columns.]
While we were staring our eyes out at the position, taking bearings, and making sketches, etc., I suddenly saw a distant cow, and, by getting on to a better rock, I soon discovered a herd of cattle feeding in the valley below the enemy’s position. Here was a chance for a lark—to mount, swoop down, and round up the cattle under their very noses, before they had time to interfere! But to my surprise, on mooting the idea, the niggers with us let out that these cattle did not belong to the enemy, but to another friendly chief, Farko, who lived near by.
That the enemy should leave these cattle untouched was a revelation to me, and I then saw that the so–called friendlies were on pretty good terms with the rebels. But for this chance eye–opener—of having, in the first instance, seen a solitary cow in the distance—I might have been led to trust to friendlies and their reports. It was well I didn’t.
Having seen all we could, and made a map, Burnham and I started out for home; reached Kami in the middle of the night, and early next day were back in Buluwayo.
Burnham a most delightful companion on such a trip; amusing, interesting, and most instructive. Having seen service against the Red Indians, he brings quite a new experience to bear on the scouting work here. And, while he talks away, there’s not a thing escapes his quick–roving eye, whether it is on the horizon or at his feet. We got on well together, and he much approved of the results of your early development in me of the art of “inductive reasoning”—in fact, before we had examined and worried out many little indications in the course of our ride, he had nicknamed me “Sherlock Holmes.”
Scout Burnham