The next drive took us through fresh mountain scenery, the heights being clothed with the candelabra-euphorbias as I had seen them on the Bamangwato hills. The fields that we passed were of considerable extent; the farmsteads were large and well enclosed; the dwelling-houses situated in their most prominent parts. At intervals of about every eighty yards in the enclosure was a simple wooden pitfall. The whole of the Makalaka villages, however, were but a mere wreck of what they had been before the Matabele invaded the Matoppo mountains.
The village that we had last passed was called Kasheme, and before the day was gone we came to another named Bosi-mapani. The settlements hereabouts were very numerous, and the next morning we arrived at another, where, although we halted and unyoked our teams half a mile away from the residences, we were soon visited by a number of the people, who wanted to sell us provisions. Bradshaw, after bargaining with a party of the Makalakas, bought a goat and a sheep, but it happened at the moment that all our servants were engaged at the waggons, and that there was no one at hand to drive the purchase home to our encampment. After a while one man was procured, but before he could get near them, the animals had all scampered off. The cunning Makalakas had set their shepherd-boys to sound their pipes close by, and as soon as the goat and the sheep heard the accustomed note they galloped away, each to its separate herd. Our man succeeded in overtaking and capturing one of the sheep, but the other two creatures got clean away. It was in vain that we threatened to report the dealers to Lo Bengula. They took our threats in the calmest way, and walked off to their homes, contriving, before they went, to get possession of Westbeech’s pocket-knife. It is scarcely necessary to say, that neither the goat nor the sheep was ever recovered.
By the 25th we had diverged somewhat from the Maytengue. Most of the granite hills were now on our left; but we could see others still more important rising on the southern horizon in front of us.
The visits that from time to time continued to be made to us by Matabele soldiers were a perpetual source of uneasiness to Z.; he appeared to dread them much more than the Makalakas, and the mere sight of any Zulu made him creep back as rapidly and as stealthily as he could to his waggon. None of them ever recognized him, but it happened once during a noonday halt, that he came into collision with two of them in a way that almost cost him his life. Distinguishable at once as Matabele by their feather head-dresses, and by their aprons of wild cats’ tails, two young fellows came to the waggon begging for a “lapiana” (a piece of calico). Z.’s little dog flew at them, growling and barking, and one of them in his annoyance was about to give the animal a tremendous blow with his kiri, which probably would have dashed its brains out. Z. came rushing forward, flushed with rage, to protect his dog, and shook his fist in the face of the intruders. It was just the excuse for a fight which the Matabele wanted; a regular scrimmage ensued, and two to one as they were, a kiri would inevitably very soon have descended on Z.’s head if Bradshaw and I had not interfered in time. We held our guns in our hands, but when the young rascals saw that we did not raise them, they struck their kiris upon the ground and broke out into a storm of abuse, which they were still continuing, when an old Matabele, his rank as a warrior indicated by his leather circlet covered by hair, made his appearance on the scene. Hearing what had transpired, he caught hold of a good stout bough of a tree, and laid it vigorously about the shoulders of the offenders. He treated them exactly like naughty little boys, and they, like little boys, crept back in disgrace, keeping their grumbling to themselves.
In the course of the afternoon we came to a village named Kambusa. It consisted only of about fifteen huts, and belonged to a man of the name of Tantje, whom Westbeech knew very well, so that we had no fear of meeting with any annoyance in it. Tantje’s residence had two enclosures, one of stakes round his hut, and another of thorn-bushes outside his fields. This was the last of the Makalaka villages we had to pass; five-and-twenty years ago they extended another hundred miles to the south, but now we were close to the boundary of the province, and before the evening we had crossed the existing frontier.
Upon the shore of the little river Ashangena, about 600 yards away from the road, Diamond drew my attention to a bush, beneath which he informed me that Mr. Frank Oates, an Englishman, had been buried. He had been hunting in the district, and had taken fever and died. His death had really occurred in the Makalaka country, but it was necessary to bring him to be buried at the frontier. His brother, Mr. William Oates, in 1874 erected a gravestone over the spot.
We had two small streams to cross before we came to the Matliutse, which crossed our path transversely. During the last stage of our journey through Makalaka-land we had crossed no fewer than seventeen rain-streams, all of them flowing into the Maytengue, and yet forming, I believe, not more than a tenth part of the affluents of that river. The scenery was as fine as any I saw during my hurried journey through the country. The soil was chiefly granite, thickly veined with quartz, and in many places marked with dark slate-coloured mica, the strata being variously horizontal, vertical, or oblique, generally towards the top of the hills slanting downwards at an angle of seventy degrees to the south-west. I saw nothing more interesting than the picturesque masses of granite that crowned the slopes of the hills; so strange and fantastic were their forms that I could not resist entering them upon my chart with names corresponding to what seemed to be their shapes. One on the Matliutse I called “the cap;” another on the next spruit, “the two sparrows;” another, “the club;” and a fourth, to the right of the road, the most striking of all, I named “the pyramid.” The scenery gave me some idea how charming the country must be in the highlands in the upper parts of the Matliutse, Shasha, Tati, and Rhamakoban, which are all of them affluents of the Limpopo.
As I crossed the two Shasha rivers next day it became perfectly clear to my mind that the Shaneng must flow either into the Matliutse or one of its tributaries. The district seemed full of game, but not to the same extent as in former years. The animals of which I saw most were pallahs, zulu-hartebeests, harrisbocks, and zebras.
In the evening we halted on the right-hand shore of the rocky Shasha, a stream that has derived its name from the character of its bed. I took the opportunity of getting out a little distance towards the east, where, on one of the granite mounds, I found some ruins that had played their part in the history of central South Africa. The hill was isolated, and not so high as those near it, and it had been fortified by a wall composed of blocks of granite laid one upon another, without being fixed by cement of any kind. The wall was about 140 feet long, and enclosed a space of ground as nearly as possible on the top of the hill, being built on the natural crags in such a way that the artificial rampart it formed hardly rose in some parts many inches from the ground, whilst in other places it was six feet high; in thickness it varied from twelve to eighteen inches. It had an entrance facing the north, and there it projected so as to make a kind of avenue. The blocks of which it was made were flat, and varying in size from four to ten inches in length, three to six inches in width, and two to ten inches in depth, the flat sides being irregular trapeziums. My impression was that the occupants of this limited fortress—whether permanent or temporary there was nothing to decide—had also erected a superior palisade of wood or bushes above the top of the masonry; but as we were bound to recommence our journey in about two hours and a half, I had no opportunity of making a deliberate survey, or of commencing any excavations which might throw more light upon the subject. We had only time that evening to go a little farther, and the gathering twilight brought us to a halt on the left-hand shore of the river, which we crossed.
After traversing as many as twelve tributaries of the rocky Shasha, we crossed the sandy Shasha, which is connected with its fellow-stream, finding the scenery at the point where we quitted the river as beautiful as any in the whole West Matabele country. The abundance and variety of plants were truly marvellous; and on the slopes where the stems of the euphorbias were mouldering, I found numerous scolopendra, two kinds of scorpions, some lizards, and many sorts of insects. Since I had entered the Makalaka country I had had no return of fever; and although I was still very weak, I persevered in my naturalist’s pursuits, finding that the enjoyment refreshed me and more than compensated for a little extra fatigue. In many places the river was sandy, but not unfrequently the bed was of granite, that formed a sort of basin, or opened in a channel, by which the water threaded its way to the south, to lose itself in the marshes of the valley. The next stream at which we arrived was the Tati, and its bed was not only sandy, but so deep, and the banks so steep, that we had very considerable difficulty in getting across.