The Ruined Cities of Zululand

by Hugh Mulleneux Walmsley

Two boats have been mentioned as intended for the use of the party descending the Zambesi River. The one was a simple ordinary pinnace, but the second and larger boat had evidently been fitted out for special use, and was in fact that appropriated to the not unfrequent voyages of the commandants of the two forts of Tete and Senna. Pulling eight oars, its speed was considerable, when rowing, as in the present instance, down stream, and it was so broad in the beam as to be able to stow away luggage as well as passengers. A light wooden framework had been constructed, so as to fit on either gunwale aft, forming a cover something resembling that of a modern English wagonette, with windows let into the side. Divans and cushions served for seats, while handsome mirrors ornamented every spare corner, thus making of the roomy boat a pleasant sleeping place, enabling its occupants to escape the pest of mosquitos, incidental to the banks of the Zambesi.

Leaving Senna late, the party dropped lazily down the broad river. The moonlight was pleasant enough; and from time to time Isabel’s voice, accompanying her guitar, rang out on the night air, while many a tale of European and African life whiled away the night. Morning dawned; the beams of the rising sun tipping the tamarind trees on the banks of the Shire as the grapnel was dropped under the lee of a small island, just where the river poured its waters into the Zambesi. The men were sent ashore to pitch a tent on the right bank, and thus night was turned into day on the bosom of the broad river. That afternoon the tent was standing under the shelter of a group of mashango trees, its canvas sides being raised to admit the air; and dinner, which, with its delicacies of fish and vegetables, seemed a banquet to men who had for so long been forced to live on venison, was served under its shade. Several bottles of Bordeaux stood under there, too, swathed in wet towels, just where the warm wind was the strongest, cooling by evaporation. In front, the river, now sweeping onward, a broad majestic stream, swollen by the waters of the Shire flowing from their sources in the vast watershed of central Africa to the north. Groups of cocoa-nut and palmyra grew here and there; the gum copal threw its shadow over the glancing water; and large ebony trees of monstrous growth, thickly covered with mantling creepers, bent over the stream. There, too, was the singular palm tree, to be met with often on the Shire, which sends up its stem, dividing many times, and each one forming a fan-like top of curiously cut leaves, like giant fingers to the hand of a Cyclops; and there was the prosopis tree, long known to the settler on the Shire’s banks for the fitness of its wood for boat-building. Beyond lay the plain, one or two small kraals dotting it here and there, the patches of sugar-cane, maize, and banana showing tokens of unusual industry and civilisation. Cattle, too, were moving lazily about in the rich pasturage, or standing grouped under the shade, while far away the blue ridges of the Morumbala mountains closed the view. The day had been cool, and a slight breeze just blew out the folds of the heavy Portuguese flag, waving from the stern of the larger boat. Its cushions had been removed and placed inside the tent, and the guitar lay neglected on the ground, its fair owner listening to the soldier’s tale of the Matabele hunt and the rhinoceros, as she twisted indolently the stalk of a splendid water-lily, gathered before landing. Between Dom Francisco and the missionary was the chess-board, but both were listening too attentively to pay much attention to the game; while the boatmen and attendants were seated in small knots round the tent discussing the remainder of the dinner, emptying half-empty bottles, or laughing, talking, and tale-telling in opposition to the parrots’ screaming among the branches.

“But,” said Isabel, as Hughes concluded the story, “your rhinoceros, dangerous as it was, is nothing to the animal of the same species, which we heard of at Tete, and which many affirmed they had seen.”

“What is it?” eagerly asked Wyzinski, forgetting the game in his desire for information. “I once met a woman of the Makao tribe, who spoke of a strange species. Strange enough she was herself, with her upper lip pierced and ornamented by an ivory ring, a bark covering serving for petticoat, that and a necklace of bark for all clothing.”

Reclining back on her cushions, the black mantilla drawn over her neck and bust, one tiny slippered foot just peeping from out of the folds of the light dress, Dona Isabel carried the pure white petals of the water-lily to her face, her large black eyes peeping over the flower contrasting strangely with its whiteness, but seeming herself too indolent to reply.

Puffing a long spiral stream of smoke from his mouth, the Portuguese noble answered for her.

“It is said, and implicitly believed by the natives, many of whom assert that they have seen it, that far away to the northward there exists a rhinoceros, carrying one single sharp pointed horn right in the centre of the forehead.”

“The unicorn of old,” interrupted Wyzinski.

“The unicorn of our fathers’ tales,” replied Dom Francisco, gravely bowing. “The animal is of immense strength and savage ferocity, say the natives. It is useless for man to contend with him, and any one who meets it may count on death.”