Suddenly I was roused from my reverie by a salutation in Sechuana—‘Rumélá.’ I looked up, and before me stood a tall stalwart Kafir, clothed in a lady’s dressing-gown. It came scantily to his knee, and in other parts seemed hardly to have been made for him, and his appearance was so queer that I burst into a laugh. I saw the blood rise in his dusky face as he asked what I was laughing at. ‘Why, you have got on a woman’s dress from my country,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said, ‘but I gave a woman for it last year.’ We had come unaware upon the southern limit of the slave trade. It was months since we had last seen any products of European manufacture except those we had brought with us, and here they were in 18° S. Lat., in the middle of South Africa, 1,500 to 1,800 miles from any sea. Livingstone woke up, smoothed down my visitor, and inquired what we could do with the cattle. We could not leave them where they were; they would find nothing to eat, and besides, when the sun got hot the flies would find their way to them. We must drive them across the river, as there were no tsétsé there, the man told us; and we found it was so, the narrowest lines frequently defining the limits of safety and danger. Nothing, however, would persuade them to take the jump from the bank into the deep black water. Our friend whistled, and from the fringe of reeds on the opposite side four or five canoes full of men shot across the narrow channel. As they landed they presented the most motley appearance. They had evidently dressed to astonish us, and each bore about his neck or shoulders some article of European manufacture. Here was a fellow with a yard and a half of green baize or red drugget tied with a leathern thong about his throat, the ends streaming away behind him; another with a yard or two of some cheap gaudy cloth with a hole cut in the middle, wearing it à la poncho; two yards of calico of the commonest adorned the person of a third; it was a most ridiculous sight, but was evidently considered most impressively overwhelming. Still the cattle resisted our united efforts. At last, a canoe was paddled over to the other side, and in three or four minutes appeared again with a tiny cow and a most diminutive calf as passengers. The little cow was lifted on to the bank, and the canoe paddled back with the calf; we got our oxen as much together in a lump as we could, close to the river, surrounded them on three sides, loosed the lowing little mother, who instantly took a header into the water, and then by shouting, pushing, and twisting tails induced our oxen to follow the example set them, and they were safe. The horses gave no trouble.
On questioning these Kafirs and their chief (Sebitoani) afterwards as to the mystery of the fine clothes, this was the interpretation. ‘Do you see that little hill? A number of men with hair like yours and with guns came from the eastwards and sat down on that hill. We sent to ask them what they wanted, and they said “to buy men.” We explained we had none to sell; it was the first time they had ever come to us, though we had heard of them before. Wouldn’t they buy ivory or ostrich feathers? No, they didn’t want anything of that sort; they had beautiful cloths, which they showed us.’ ‘I told them,’ said Sebitoani, ‘that I thought it was an “ugly” thing to sell men, but they sat there day after day, and showed us fresh cloths so beautiful that you would have sold your grand-mother for them. Then I somehow remembered there were men whom we had taken in our last raid. And I at length consented to part with them. But they were not many, and they wanted more. I said I had none; if I sold now it must be my own people, and I would not do that. Then they asked, “Don’t you want oxen?” What could I say—doesn’t a chief always want oxen? “Well, as we came here, about five days off we passed through a country where the oxen were like the grass for number. Lend us 400 or 500 of your warriors, and we will help with our guns, and let us attack that tribe. We will take the men and women, and you shall take the oxen.” What could I say? This appeared a very good plan to me, so we attacked. They got two great tens (200) of men and women, and I got all those cattle,’ pointing to a plain on which a herd of these diminutive little creatures were feeding. I forget whether Livingstone described them, but they were most remarkably small things, like sturdy Durham oxen three feet high. There was not the least difficulty in carrying them about bodily; we put one into a waggon, hoping to bring it out, but it died. Pretty little gentle beasts, I wish I had taken more trouble to secure specimens. When the men milked them they held them by the hind leg as you would a goat. On the other hand, by the shores of Lake ’Ngami, a gigantic long-horned breed is found, stolen in a raid from the Ba-Wangketsi thirty years before our visit. They were originally remarkable for their heads, but in four or five generations, from feeding on the silicious coated reeds and succulent grasses near the lake, had developed wonderfully in horns and height. Through Livingstone I obtained one 6 ft. 2 in. high, with horns measuring from tip to tip 8 ft. 7 in. and 14 ft. 2 in. round from one point to the other taking in the base of the skull. We had cleared a way for the waggons through the bush, but had in many places on our return to widen it for my ox. I hoped to have brought him home and to have presented him to the Zoological Gardens, but after driving him 800 miles the grass got very short, and his horns coming to the ground before his nose, prevented him feeding. I was obliged to shoot him, and his head now hangs over the sideboard in my dining-room.
These slave-dealers, with their devilish counsels and temptations, were Mambari, a kind of half-caste Portuguese, who fifty years ago were agents for the export slave-trade. When the survivors of the gangs reached the coast they were packed away in a slave-ship, like herrings in a cask, and transported. Through the vigilance of English cruisers this iniquitous traffic has been greatly reduced, and, but for the refusal of the right of search by the French, would be very small and unremunerative; but the Arab curse still continues, and though, now that the sea-board is partially occupied by Europeans, greater difficulty will be placed in its way, I am of opinion that through the avarice and cupidity of man—African and European—it will not entirely disappear so long as there is any ivory left. That once exhausted, is there anything else worth bringing a ten-mile journey to the coast?
In the late very cool partitioning of Africa we may congratulate ourselves in having obtained possession of Mashonaland, a district healthy enough for colonisation, and apparently rich enough to repay it. The tsétsé, that great enemy to the cattle-breeder, will disappear before the approach of civilisation, and the killing off of the game, especially the buffalo, its standing dish, as it has done many times already in African lore. I am speaking of the tracts south of the Zambesi. Of tropical lands to the north I know nothing, save from what I read and am told, and I cannot yet see how they are to be settled. Fever and general unhealthiness must weight immigration heavily, and even if the country is capable of supplying the needs of the world in the future, what philanthropic society will subsidise the workers until the industries are developed? It must be remembered the greatest prophylactics in an evil climate are movement, and its consequent excitement, and change of scene—the settler dies where the traveller lives. The railway, if made, will help to suppress slavery, by giving carriage for the ivory, its only cause at present—no ivory, no slavery. May the venture turn out better than many another has done, and not end in that very questionable blessing, a rum-civilisation!
The influx of immigrants into Mashonaland will, in time, with the gold and diamond seeking population further south, tend to minimise the power of the Boers over the native tribes. Dutchmen are slow colonists, and will not be able to hold their own with the incomers in enterprise, or in a few years in numbers or power, and the evil influence and oppression they have at times exercised upon the black race will be at an end. I hope no worse régime may come in with the new rule. There were many good points in the Dutch farmers, and I think they compare very favourably with English squatters in other lands. Where antagonistic races are brought together, the minority, the whites, if they are to hold their ground, are almost inevitably forced for very existence to terrorise the black majority that would otherwise overwhelm them. I am not arguing that their conduct is moral or legal, but it has been, and will continue to be, the rule where whites settle in black men’s lands uninvited. We may hold up our hands in a Pharisaical way, and when we are once secure, I grant we try to improve our subjects; but they must be our subjects first. But would Englishmen under similar conditions have done much better than the Dutchmen? I think not. Without the pale of law, they would hardly have been so much of a law unto themselves. No doubt the Boers have many faults, and with respect to the native races have shown great cruelty—my contention is they could hardly have held their own without. We must not be too hard on them because they have twice got the better of us in the field, and twice in diplomacy. Englishmen have not forgotten Laings Nek and the Majuba Hills. Diplomatically, too, we were twice worsted: the Boers had very troublesome neighbours, and sought the suzerainty of our Queen for their own ends, not by a unanimous vote I know; but there are ‘oppositions’ everywhere, and at all events the seekers were the majority. The troublesome neighbours, now we are masters, call upon us to rectify the frontier line, which had been greatly encroached upon by the Boers. We refuse, or delay, to set matters right. Boers’ troublesome neighbours become ours. The Zulus are conquered with some difficulty, and the Boers, relieved from their anxieties, demand and obtain the withdrawal of the suzerainty. This is not my opinion alone. The Zulus were our fast friends till we refused to undo the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the Dutchmen—the whole story, including the subsequent withdrawal of our troops, is a page that one would like to tear out of our annals.
The character of the country in its different stages is well given in the illustrations. There are no striking features; no mountains, no large river, except the Zambesi, and only one rather uninteresting lake, ’Ngami; no great forests, no tropical vegetation; the rains are scanty, the soil dry, the plains large. What you see one day you may see for a week. In most countries you would have to describe nature in her many phases, but in South Africa one might take a paint-brush and give a broad, general idea of the land, with four or five streaks of colour—the widely extending, ascending, nearly treeless flats from Kuruman to the Molopo River; the broken, fairly clothed region of the Bakatla; and the open park-like scenery between them and the rocky homes of the Bakaa and Ba-Mungwato. Throughout this area the prevailing trees are mimosas; the flowers are of the same genera and orders, undisturbed by man—sheets of different kinds are often spread out side by side, parterre fashion, in separate beds, not mingling even at the edges. They have fought the battle out amongst themselves, and it has ended in the survival of the fittest, aliens less suited to the particular border being crowded out by the stronger natives.
From the Ba-Mungwato, however, as you dive into the Kalahari desert by the Bushmen sucking-holes of ’Serotli, thirty yards of sand suffice to change the growth and families of trees and flowers. On the side we struck the hollow, they were old friends; on the other, entire strangers—not even recognised by the Kafirs who had accompanied us from the south.
We had turned over a fresh leaf in Nature’s book, and it lasted us until the sluggish waters of the Zouga River and Lake Kamadou came in sight, with their lonely palm-trees, and, on the upper reaches of the river, unusually thick bush. You thence passed through a country cut up with narrow sleepy streams, or by the dry barren road, eastward of Lake Kamadou, to the open flats of the Zambesi, the approach from the side of the Chobé being studded with euphorbia-trees, quaint of growth, and excellently named candelabra. Throughout these parts you hardly see a hillock; so rare, indeed, is the sight, that one tiny, isolated mound is named ‘Sisalébue’—‘we are still looking at you’—by the Kafirs, in recognition of the scarcity of even such haycocks. Beyond the Zouga the wonderful abundance of animal life is not maintained. There is game, but not in large herds. The happy hunting grounds in my time began at the Molopo and ended at the Zouga.
Throughout South Africa the sparseness of the population has favoured the increase of the game, coupled with the fact that the people were not adequately armed for its destruction. The massing of animals in particular localities, dependent on the waters, which are few and far between, may perhaps have led to an exaggerated idea of the sum total; but put it as you will, after all real and imaginary deductions from whatsoever cause, there never was a land so full of wild life since antediluvian days. It will die out before guns and civilisation, and that quickly, though the fly may bar the way to mounted sportsmen, for there are no dense jungles or inaccessible ranges of mountains for the beasts to fall back upon.