A CARNIVAL OF MURDER—PRECEDING JAMESON'S RAID AND CHAMBERLAIN'S CONSPIRACY.
Having remained in Johannesburg for just thirty days, I secured four pack donkeys, and in company with three friends, started for this fabulously rich country, Golden Rhodesia. It was the rainy season, and it was rain, rain, rain, day and night, but we were determined not to be balked by anything; we would see Buluwayo, the gold center, 600 miles away, or go down in the attempt. We had before us eight swollen rivers, wicked rivers at this season, but almost dry beds at any other time of the year. We had to swim all of them, and what a struggle it was for us! I can't understand now just how we succeeded, and do not know how we escaped the crocodiles, yet we landed safely in Victoria, Mashonaland, on Easter Sunday, in the early part of April.
CECIL J. RHODES
Notorious for his greed and inhumanity.
Here I found about 600 people sleeping in the graveyard, and about 300 lying on cots and on the counters in the stores and various other places, all down with the fever. I did not like the situation at all. To buy anything one had to help himself and then hand the money to the sick man on the counter. I found that Salisbury, Gwelo and Buluwayo were all practically in the same condition. It was fever, fever, nothing but fever everywhere, and all this talk of gold, gold, gold, was entirely misleading. It did not take us but about one minute to discover that Golden Rhodesia was a golden fraud, and so it was then, and so it is now, and will forever be. However, I was not satisfied, so I traversed the whole land, penetrated into the jungles of the Zambesi, roamed about in company with the elephant, rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the savage buffalo, giraffe, zebra, the lion, leopard, hyena, wild dog, jackal and all the many and various kinds of antelope that swarm in that far-a-way, God-forsaken, fever-stricken country, where Livingstone breathed his last, and where the natives, in thousands, naked as nature made them, swarm about you, and look at you and treat you royally in their simple way. Here was wild nature, in all its glory, and here I was supremely happy. Thousands of baboons and monkeys made music during the day, and at night-fall the lions, hyenas and jackals took up the strain and kept a curious, nature-loving white man, with his rifle on his knee, delightfully entertained. After several months of exploring, I returned to Buluwayo, on March 21st, 1896; and on March 23rd, the Matabeles broke out in rebellion against the great C.J. Rhodes, and his great fraud, the Chartered Company.
The Matabeles surrounded this miserable, drunken, fever-stricken town, and, of course, I was one of the victims. These Kaffirs, 15,000 or 20,000 strong, would dance on the ridges about us, make sport of us, and have a good time generally during the day, and when night came, all women and children were shut up in the market building, while the men were in the laager surrounding it. During the night every house in town was abandoned. False alarm after false alarm was the order of the night; and how often have I seen loving mothers, with their arms around the necks of their two, three or four children, moaning, shrieking, praying, appealing to God and kissing their little ones the last farewell! Those awful scenes still haunt me, and will till the day of my death. During the day the men would go out and fight for a while, and then fly back with the Matabeles after them, and proceed to get on a big drunk, and then have a riot meeting.
Innocent Matabele Kaffirs hung on the lone tree on Fife Street in Buluwayo, in 1896, by order of C.J. Rhodes and his Chartered Co., in order to amuse his fellow British subjects.
During the siege, many small parties of Kaffirs would come into Buluwayo for safety, as they would not take any part in the war. Chartered officials made use of these small parties, as a means to amuse the people with interesting street scenes. On reaching the town, the party of two, or three, or four, or possibly ten Kaffirs, would be arrested and ordered shot. The poor devils would be marched up the street, lined up, and in the presence of a large crowd, shot down. After several hours, when all had feasted their eyes and satisfied their curiosity, the innocent whites, among the Company's convicts, were made to carry these mangled bodies in their arms to the veldt, and bury them. These convicts were not allowed to make use of wagons or carts. In order to have a change of scene, the guards would sometimes make these refugees climb the big tree on Fife Street, and having attached ropes to their necks and a limb of the tree, would make them jump for their lives.