The railway station is fairly adapted for its purpose, though its construction was, necessarily, rapid. The settling reservoirs, fed by pipes from the dams, are not| far from it; but I fear that they will be of little use, as the soil is too porous. A coating of cement would make them effective, but the general opinion is that cement would be too costly.
Bulawayo’s Great Defect.—Better Water Supply Imperative.
The great defect of Bulawayo is the smallness of the water supply and the badness of it. At present the inhabitants depend on wells, and water is easily obtainable at 30 and 40 feet, but the water is of a hard and indifferent quality. Up on the Maatschesmuslopje stream, about two and a half miles from the town, there have been constructed three dams of different lengths and varying heights. Number 1 dam is the nearest to Bulawayo, and has a solid stone and cement core starting from the bedrock 10 feet wide, and decreasing by set-backs of 6 inches to a width of 2 feet at the top. Number 2 dam has a puddled core of clay faced with stone, and Number 3 is of similar construction. In April last these dams were full and overflowing, but unfortunately, through bad construction and want of care, there were several leaks, and it is now decided to demolish two of the dams and rebuild them. Numbers 2 and 3 are quite fit to retain the water catchment, and Number 1 will be finished by the end of the year. The estimated storage of water by the three dams is calculated to be between 40 and 45 million gallons. A fourth dam, about to be erected, will, it is thought, considerably increase the storage.
Several critics are of the opinion that the dams will not retain any water, though they were full last April.
We have had four copious showers of rain since our arrival on the 4th inst, but a few hours later the spruits, gullies, and watercourses were almost waterless, the streets showing scarcely a trace of the rain, so porous and thirsty is the soil. Daily it becomes apparent to me that the inhabitants of Bulawayo should lose no time in studying the art of water conservation. In a country just within the tropics an abundant supply of water is essential, and thirty gallons per head per day would not be excessive. Ten thousand inhabitants should be able to command 300,000 gallons daily, but Bulawayo within twenty years will have probably 20,000, and there is no river between here and Khama’s country that could supply 600,000 gallons daily. Numbers of little watersheds may be drained into reservoirs, but if I were a citizen of Bulawayo my anxiety would be mainly on the subject of water. The water question is not at all an insoluble one, because, for the matter of that, Bulawayo will have always the Zambesi tributaries to fall back upon, especially the Guay River.
Lo Ben’s Kraal.
At the north end of the town we come to a gate leading to an avenue which ran perfectly straight for two miles and a half. The carriage road, which it is intended to macadamise, is about 30 feet wide, and running parallel with it on either side is an enclosure 50 feet wide, to be planted with shade trees. Thus the avenue embraces a width of about 130 feet. At the extremity of it is the Government House, standing in grounds which four years ago were occupied by Lo Bengula’s kraal. We were all curious to see the place, and one of the first objects shown to us was the small tree under which the Matabele king dispensed his bloody judgments.
Here is a description of the place from “Zambesia”: “The King’s capital stands upon a ridge on the northern side of the Bulawayo River, in a most commanding position, overlooking as it does the entire country round. Every yard of the ground was covered with dung, layer after layer; the whole place was filthily dirty. The King used to sit on a block of wood in the middle of a great pole stockade, surrounded by sheep and goats.”
The first sentence is most misleading, though not inaccurate. The kraal stood upon the same level as the plain of New Bulawayo, but the “Bulawayo River”—a dry watercourse most of the year—has scoured out a broad hollow to a depth of about 20 feet in the plain, and, as the kraal was seated on the brow above it, it enables one to have a view of a circle of about fifteen miles in diameter, within which are probably three or four of these long, broad swells of plain land.