CHAPTER VIII
DOWN TO THE SABI RIVER AND MATINDELA RUINS
It was the report of extensive ruins, ‘larger,’ said a native, ‘than those of Zimbabwe,’ which induced us to make an expedition involving considerable hardships and unknown risks down in the direction of the Sabi River. Our waggons, of course, could not go, as our way would be by the narrow native paths. Previous experience had warned us against depending on the native huts, so for the transport of our tents, bedding, and provisions we had to make considerable preparations.
At Fort Victoria we borrowed seven donkeys from the Chartered Company, and we engaged a few natives of reputed respectability under the command of a man called Mashah, quite the most brilliant specimen of the Makalanga race we came across during our sojourn in the country. He, his father and his mother and his wife, a sister of our old friend Umgabe, had been captured some years ago by the Matabele and spent several years in servitude, during which time he had learnt the Zulu tongue and the [[248]]more energetic habits of this stronger race. Eventually, after the death of his father and mother, he and his wife had escaped and returned to Umgabe’s kraal, and on the arrival of the Chartered Company’s pioneer force Mashah placed his services at their disposal. He greatly distinguished himself by saving the lives of a band of the pioneers when on a wild prospecting trip, for which service he received a present of a Martini-Henry rifle, of which he was naturally very proud.
METZWANDIRA
Mashah’s Makalanga brethren call him ‘the white man’s slave,’ from his devotion to the new race, and he constantly affirmed that if ever the white man left this country he would go with them, for he was heartily sick of the petty jealousies and constant squabbles of his countrymen. He was a strange object to look upon with his tawny B.S.A. hat with an ostrich feather in it, his shirt with a girdle round his waist, and bare legs. He never once grumbled at anything he had to do, he was never tired, and kept our other Kaffirs in excellent order. As for the rest of them, they were as naked as God made them, save for the insignificant loin-cloth. A man called Metzwandira was told off as our body-servant, to wash the cups and plates and spoons, which latter treasures he counted carefully over to us after every meal. We got greatly attached to this individual, his manners were so gentle and courteous and his voice so soft and silvery. One and all of them were delighted to become possessed of our rejected milk tins, &c., with which [[251]]they made bracelets, seven inches wide, by cutting off the two ends of the tin and drilling holes along the edge. One man tied the lid of a ‘bully beef’ tin round his neck, another fastened the round bottom of a milk tin in a jaunty fashion on to his black hair. Every tin we opened and finished was eagerly picked up by our followers and carried in net bags all the way, with a view to making some object of ornament out of them. Even when given an old pair of boots, the recipient only took out the brass hooks and eyes to fasten as ornaments in his loin-cloth, and cast the rest away.
On leaving Fort Victoria we followed the Chartered Company’s road for forty miles northwards with our waggons to Makori post station. One day we were encamped near the two large villages of Umfanipatza and Sibibabira built on two rocks, but now, with the confidence inspired by the presence of the Chartered Company, the inhabitants are beginning to build huts on the flat space around. We paid a visit to them both, and admired the tall euphorbia which grew in them and the rich entanglement of begonia and other creepers then in flower. In one hut we found a man weaving a bark blanket very neatly with no loom, only platting it with his fingers. It was done with a kind of pink twine made of some bark.
At Makori post station, under the shade of wide-spreading trees, and in close proximity to some fantastic granite rocks, which rose like gigantic [[252]]menhirs out of the plain and were covered with an almost scarlet lichen, we passed several busy days, preparing cruppers, girths, and breast-bands for our seven pack-donkeys; bags for our coffee, sugar, and tea; cobbling our boots and overhauling our clothes, and nursing four fever patients, for there had been two days of chilly drizzling rain, the inevitable result of which was fever for some of our party. The post station lay about one mile from our camping-ground; the two huts where the B.S.A. men lived were situated on a rocky kopje full of caves, in one of which their horse was stabled, and from the top of the rock an extensive view was gained over the high plateau, well wooded just here and studded with rocks of fantastic shape. Here and there thick volumes of smoke rose from the grass fires common all over the country at this season of the year, which looked for all the world like distant manufacturing towns, and suggested the comparison of a view from a spur of the Derbyshire hills over the plain of Cheshire, with Stockport, Manchester, and other centres of industry belching forth their dense volumes of smoke.