[44] Badminton Library. "The Lion in S. Africa," p. 343.
[45] In a letter to me from East Africa, March 12th, 1918, Harold Hill states that he has been in at the death of 135 lions and that his brother Clifford has seen 160 lions shot. In most cases, he admits, he and his brother generally allowed some friend to have his first shot.
CHAPTER IX
1893-1896
Selous had been hunting something all his life, yet he never seems to have lost sight of the possibility that a little fellow with a bow and arrow might one day take a shot at him. Perhaps in earlier days he feared him a little, but when, one January day in 1893, he went to Barrymore House, his mother's home at Wargrave, the small archer was there waiting in ambush and found a very willing victim. The immediate cause of the attack was the fact that Miss Gladys Maddy, a daughter of the Rev. Canon Maddy, was staying with Selous' mother. This was one of Selous' lucky days, for in a short time, since the attraction seems to have been mutual, he decided to try and win the lady as his wife. In this he was quite successful, and by the spring they were engaged. Meanwhile the hunter, being now well known to the public, had arranged to make a lecturing tour in the United States, under the auspices of Major Pond, and had hoped that this would be finished by late September, when he would be able to do a hunt in the Rockies afterwards. All arrangements had been completed and he had already taken his passage to America when the news of the Matabele rising arrived in England. He at once cancelled all his engagements and took the first steamer to South Africa.
After the Pioneer expedition to Mashunaland in 1890 had proved a success the country seemed in so quiet a state that the police force there was in 1891 disbanded. This was doubtless a great mistake. The Matabele were not the kind of people to take the position of a conquered race with equanimity. Their whole history showed them to be a virile fighting people who up till now had conquered all native races in their vicinity, and believed themselves to be superior to the white, with whom they had not as yet been fairly tested in battle. This primal fact, and the gross mismanagement on the part of the Chartered Company (which Selous himself admits) of the cattle question, produced a feeling of bitterness on the part of the Matabele, who, being above all things cattle-owners, and not slaves who had been conquered, resented the regulation exacting paid labour from every able-bodied man. The confiscation, too, of their cattle and the manner in which the confiscation was carried out added fuel to the fire. These circumstances, combined with the fact that the Matabele nation had not been beaten in war, were the causes for the outbreak in 1893. The Matabele, in fact, were still too raw to appreciate the advantages (sic) of civilization. They did without them. The assegai and the raid were to them still the heart of life. From the time of Umsilikatzie till now their forays amongst their more or less defenceless neighbours had, comparatively speaking, been one continuous success, even the fairly powerful Bechuanas under Khama were in a constant state of dread. Within a few years they ravaged all the country up to the Zambesi, and even sent two expeditions right across the waterless Kalahari to attack the Batauwani of Lake Ngami. These were indeed bold enterprises, as the marauders had to traverse nearly four hundred miles of desert almost devoid of game and only inhabited by a few bushmen. This first expedition, in 1883, was only partially successful, whilst the second one met with complete disaster. The Batauwani got wind of the impending attack and sent their women and children and cattle beyond the Botletlie river. They then ambushed the Matabele and killed many of them, whilst large numbers were drowned in trying to cross the river. Not a single head of cattle was captured, and hundreds of Lobengula's best warriors died from starvation, thirst, and exhaustion on the return journey, whilst only a remnant of the army got back to Bulawayo. One smaller party of Matabele went north by the Mababe river and eventually got back to Matabeleland by the northern route.
It was between 1883 and 1890 that the Matabele were most active in attacking their weaker neighbours. Sometimes with diabolic cunning they "nursed" the various Mashuna chiefs until the latter became rich in cattle and ivory and were ripe for slaughter. This they did to Chameluga, a powerful sorcerer, whom Lobengula professed to esteem and even to fear, but this favouritism was, after all, only an assumed pose, for in 1883 an army was sent to destroy the Situngweesa, of whom Chameluga was chief. The chief was summoned to Bulawayo, but was met at the Tchangani river, and all his party slaughtered with the exception of a young wife named Bavea, who was taken prisoner, but afterwards escaped to the north. Before his death, however, Chameluga had just time to send a young son to warn his people, and they took flight into the hilly country between the Mazoe and Inyagui rivers, and only a few were destroyed by the raiding Matabele who had followed their spoor. In 1888 an impi raided the Barotsi and killed the chief Sikabenga and most of his tribe.
In 1890 the Matabele also attacked and almost completely destroyed the large Mashuna tribe whose ladies were so wonderfully tattooed, and which Selous described as seeing east of the Sabi on his visit there in 1885. Selous does not mention this in his book, although he must later have been well aware of the fact.