Impressions of South Africa

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

Next day we came, at the foot of the Matoppo Hills, to a solitary farm, where we found a bright young Englishman, who, with only one white companion, had established himself in this wilderness and was raising good crops on fields to which he brought water from a neighbouring streamlet. Even the devastation wrought by a flight of locusts had not dispirited him nor diminished his faith in the country. It is not the least of the pleasures of such a journey that one finds so many cheery, hearty, sanguine young fellows scattered about this country, some of them keeping or helping to keep stores, some of them, like our friend here, showing what the soil may be made to do with skill and perseverance, and how homes may be reared upon it. One is always hospitably received; one often finds in the hard-working pioneer or the youth behind the store counter a cultivated and thoughtful mind; one has, perhaps, a glimpse of an attractive personality developing itself under simple yet severe conditions, fitted to bring out the real force of a man. After half an hour's talk you part as if you were parting with an old friend, yet knowing that the same roof is not likely ever to cover both of you again. There are, of course, rough and ill-omened explorers and settlers in South Africa, as in other new countries: but having wandered a good deal, in different countries, on the outer edge of civilization, I was struck by the large proportion of well-mannered and well-educated men whom one came across in this tropical wilderness.

From the young Englishman's farm we turned in among the hills, following the course of the brook, and gently rising till we reached a height from which a superb view to the north unrolled itself. The country was charming, quite unlike the dull brown downs of yesterday. On each side were steep hills, sometimes rocky, sometimes covered thick with wood; between them in the valley a succession of smooth, grassy glades, each circled round by trees. It was rural scenery—scenery in which one could wish to build a cottage and dwell therein, or in which a pastoral drama might be laid. There was nothing to suggest Europe, for the rocks and, still more, the trees were thoroughly African in character, and the air even drier and keener than that of Sicily. But the landscape was one which any lover of Theocritus might have come to love; and some day, when there are large towns in Matabililand, and plenty of Englishmen living in them, the charm of these hills will be appreciated. The valley rises at last to a grassy table-land, where, on a boss of granite rock, stand the ancient walls of Dhlodhlo, which we had come to see. I have already described the ruins (see [Chapter IX]), which are scanty enough, and interesting, not from any beauty they possess, but because we have so few data for guessing at their purpose or the race that built them. The country is now very solitary, and the natives fear to approach the ruins, especially at night, believing them to be haunted. Having spent some hours in examining them, we were just starting when a swarm of locusts passed, the first we had seen. It is a strange sight, beautiful if you can forget the destruction it brings with it. The whole air, to twelve or even eighteen feet above the ground, is filled with the insects, reddish brown in body, with bright gauzy wings. When the sun's rays catch them it is like the sea sparkling with light. When you see them against a cloud they are like the dense flakes of a driving snow-storm. You feel as if you had never before realized immensity in number. Vast crowds of men gathered at a festival, countless tree-tops rising along the slope of a forest ridge, the chimneys of London houses from the top of St. Paul's,—all are as nothing to the myriads of insects that blot out the sun above and cover the ground beneath and fill the air whichever way one looks. The breeze carries them swiftly past, but they come on in fresh clouds, a host of which there is no end, each of them a harmless creature which you can catch and crush in your hand, but appalling in their power of collective devastation. Yet here in southern Matabililand there had been only a few swarms. We were to see later on, in the eastern mountain region, far more terrible evidences of their presence.

From Dhlodhlo we drove to the store on the Shangani River, a distance of twenty miles or more, right across the open veldt, finding our way, with the aid of a native boy, over stony hills and thick shrubs, and even here and there across marshy stream beds, in a way which astonishes the European accustomed to think that roads, or at least beaten tracks, are essential to four-wheeled vehicles. I have driven in an open cart across the central watershed of the Rocky Mountains; but the country there, rough as it is, is like a paved road compared with some parts of the veldt over which the South African guides his team. Once or twice we missed the way in the deepening twilight, and began to prepare ourselves for another night under the stars, with a nearly exhausted food-supply. But at last, just as darkness fell, we reached a native village, and obtained (with difficulty) a native guide for the last few miles of the drive. These miles were lighted by a succession of grass-fires. Such fires are much commoner here than in the prairies of Western America, and, happily, much less dangerous, for the grass is usually short and the fire moves slowly. They are sometimes accidental, but more frequently lighted by the natives for the sake of getting a fresh growth of young grass on the part burned and thereby attracting the game. Sometimes the cause is even slighter. The Kafirs are fond of eating the mice and other small inhabitants of the veldt, and they fire the grass to frighten these little creatures, and catch them before they can reach their holes, with the further convenience of having them ready roasted. Thus at this season nearly half the land on these downs is charred, and every night one sees the glow of a fire somewhere in the distance. The practice strikes a stranger as a wasteful one, exhausting to the soil, and calculated to stunt the trees, because, though the grass is too short to make the fire strong enough to kill a well-grown tree, it is quite able to injure the younger ones and prevent them from ever reaching their due proportions.

The term "store," which I have just used, requires some explanation. There are, of course, no inns in the country, except in the three or four tiny towns. Outside these, sleeping quarters are to be had only in small native huts, built round a sort of primitive "general shop" which some trader has established to supply the wants of those who live within fifty miles or who pass along the road. The hut is of clay, with a roof of thatch, which makes it cooler than the store with its roof of galvanised iron. White ants are usually at work upon the clay walls, sending down little showers of dust upon the sleeper. Each hut contains two rough wooden frames, across which there is stretched, to make a bed, a piece of coarse linen or ticking. Very prudent people turn back the dirty rug or bit of old blanket which covers the bed, and cast a glance upon the clay floor, to see that no black momba or other venomous snake is already in possession. Such night quarters may seem unattractive, but we had many a good night's rest in them. When they are unattainable one camps out.

From the Shangani River to Gwelo the track leads again over a succession of huge, swelling ridges, separated from one another by the valleys of spruits, or streams, now nearly dry, but in the wet season running full and strong. The descent to the spruit, which is often a short, steep pitch and is then called a donga, needs careful driving, and the ascent up the opposite bank is for a heavy waggon a matter of great difficulty. We passed waggons hardly advancing a step, though eight or nine span of oxen were tugging at them, and sometimes saw two three span detached from another team and attached to the one which had failed, unaided, to mount the slope. No wonder that, when the difficulty of bringing up machinery is so great, impatient mine-owners long for the railway.

The first sign that we were close upon Gwelo came from the sight of a number of white men in shirt-sleeves running across a meadow—an unusual sight in South Africa, which presently explained itself as the English inhabitants engaged in a cricket match. Nearly the whole town was either playing or looking on. It was a hot afternoon, but our energetic countrymen were not to be scared by the sun from the pursuit of the national game. They are as much Englishmen in Africa as in England, and, happily for them and for their country, there is no part of the national character that is more useful when transplanted than the fondness for active exercise. Gwelo, a cheerful little place, though it stands in a rather bleak country, with a wooded ridge a little way off to the south, interested me as a specimen of the newest kind of settlement. It is not in strictness a mining camp, for there are no reefs in the immediate neighbourhood, but a mining centre, which proposes to live as the local metropolis of a gold-bearing district, a place of supply and seat of local administration. In October, 1895, it had about fifteen houses inhabited by Europeans and perhaps thirty houses altogether; but the materials for building other houses were already on the ground, and the usual symptoms of a "boom" were discernible. Comparing it with the many similar "new cities" I had seen in Western America, I was much struck with the absence of the most conspicuous features of those cities—the "saloons" and "bars." In California or Montana these establishments, in which the twin deities of gambling and drinking are worshipped with equal devotion, form half the houses of a recent settlement in a mining region. In South Africa, except at and near Johannesburg, one scarcely sees them. Drinking rarely obtrudes itself. What gambling there may be I know not, but at any rate there are no gambling-saloons. Nothing can be more decorous than the aspect of these new African towns, and the conduct of the inhabitants seldom belies the aspect. There is, of course, a free use of alcohol. But there is no shooting, such as goes on in American mining towns: crimes of violence of any kind are extremely rare; and the tracks are safe. No one dreams of taking the precautions against "road-agents" (i.e. highwaymen) which are still far from superfluous in the Western States and were far from superfluous in Australia. Trains are not stopped and robbed; coaches are not "held up." Nothing surprised me more, next to the apparent submissiveness of the native Kafirs, than the order which appeared to prevail among the whites. A little reflection shows that in this northerly part of the country, where travelling is either very slow or very costly and difficult, malefactors would have few chances of escape. But I do not think this is the chief cause of the orderly and law-abiding habits of the people. There have never been any traditions of violence, still less of crime, in South Africa, except as against the natives. The Dutch Boers were steady, solid people, little given to thieving or to killing one another. The English have carried with them their respect for law and authority. In some respects their ethical standard is not that of the mother country. But towards one another and towards those set in authority over them, their attitude is generally correct.

The night we spent at Gwelo gave a curious instance of the variability of this climate. The evening had been warm, but about midnight the S.E. wind rose, bringing a thin drizzle of rain, and next morning the cold was that of Boston or Edinburgh in a bitter north-easter. Having fortunately brought warm cloaks and overcoats, we put on all we had and fastened the canvas curtains round the vehicle. Nevertheless, we shivered all day long, the low thick clouds raining at intervals, and the malign blast chilling one's bones. Gwelo, of course, declared that such weather was quite exceptional; but those can have travelled little indeed who have not remarked how often they encounter "exceptional weather," and Gwelo, having existed for eighteen months only, had at best a small experience to fall back upon. The moral for travellers is: "Do not forget to take your furs and your ulsters to tropical South Africa."

Some forty miles beyond Gwelo there is a mountain called Iron Mine Hill, where the Mashonas have for generations been wont to find and work iron. All or nearly all the Kafir tribes do this, but the Mashonas are more skilful at it than were their conquerors the Matabili. Here a track turns off to the south-east to Fort Victoria, the first military post established by the Company in its territories, and for a time the most important. It has fallen into the background lately, partly because the gold-reefs have not realized the hopes once formed of them, partly because it suffers from fever after the rains. I went to it because from it one visits the famous ruins at Zimbabwye, the most curious relic of prehistoric antiquity yet discovered in tropical Africa. The journey, one hundred miles from Iron Mine Hill to Victoria, is not an easy one, for there are no stores on the way where either provisions or night-quarters can be had, and the track is a bad one, being very little used. The country is well wooded and often pretty, with fantastic, rocky hills rising here and there, but presenting few striking features. Two views, however, dwell in my recollection as characteristic of South Africa. We had slept in a rude hut on the banks of the Shashi River, immediately beneath a rocky kopje, and rose next morning before dawn to continue the journey. Huge rocks piled wildly upon one another towered above the little meadow—rocks covered with lichens of brilliant hues, red, green, and yellow, and glowing under the rays of the level sun. Glossy-leaved bushes nestled in the crevices and covered the mouths of the dens to which the leopards had retired from their nocturnal prowls. One tree stood out against the clear blue on the top of the highest rock. Cliff-swallows darted and twittered about the hollows, while high overhead, in the still morning air, two pairs of large hawks sailed in wide circles round and round the summit of the hill. A few miles farther the track crossed a height from which one could gaze for thirty miles in every direction over a gently rolling country covered with wood, but with broad stretches of pasture interposed, whose grass, bleached to a light yellow, made one think it a mass of cornfields whitening to harvest. Out of these woods and fields rose at intervals what seemed the towers and spires of cities set upon hills. We could have fancied ourselves in central Italy, surveying from some eminence like Monte Amiata the ancient towns of Tuscany and Umbria rising on their rocky heights out of chestnut woods and fields of ripening corn. But the city towers were only piles of grey rock, and over the wide horizon there was not a sign of human life—only the silence and loneliness of an untouched wilderness.

From Fort Victoria, where the war of 1893 began by a raid of the young Matabili warriors upon the Mashona tribes, who were living under the protection of the Company, it is seventeen miles to Zimbabwye. The track leads through a pretty country, with alternate stretches of wood and grass, bold hills on either side, and blue peaked mountains in the distance. Crossing a low, bare ridge of granite, one sees nearly a mile away, among thick trees, a piece of grey wall, and when one comes nearer, what seems the top of a tower just peeping over the edge of the wall. It is Zimbabwye—a wall of loose but well trimmed and neatly fitted pieces of granite surrounding an elliptical inclosure; within this inclosure other half-ruined walls over-grown by shrubs and trees, and a strange solid tower or pillar thirty feet high, built, without mortar, of similar pieces of trimmed granite.[51] This is all that there is to see. One paces to and fro within the inclosure and measures the width and length of the passages between the walls. One climbs the great inclosing wall at a point where part of it has been broken down, and walks along the broad top, picking one's way over the stems of climbing shrubs, which thrust themselves across the wall from beneath or grow rooted in its crevices. One looks and looks again, and wonders. But there is nothing to show whether this grey wall is three centuries or thirty centuries old. There is no architectural style, no decoration even, except a rudely simple pattern on the outside of the wall which faces the east; so there is nothing by which one can connect this temple, if it is a temple, with the buildings of any known race or country. In this mystery lies the charm of the spot—in this and in the remoteness and silence of a country which seems to have been always as it is to-day. One mark of modern man, and one only, is to be seen. In the middle of the valley, some three hundred yards from the great building, Mr. Cecil Rhodes has erected a monument to Major Wilson and the thirty-seven troopers who fell with him on the Lower Shangani River in December, 1893, fighting gallantly to the last against an overwhelming force of Matabili. The monument stands on an eminence surrounded by the broken wall of some ancient stronghold. It has been wisely placed far enough from the great ruin not to form an incongruous element in the view of the latter, and it was an imaginative thought to commemorate, at a spot in this new land which bears witness to a race of prehistoric conquerors, the most striking incident in the history of the latest conquest.

We climbed the rocky height, where the skilfully constructed walls of the ancient fort show that those who built Zimbabwye lived in fear of enemies. We sat beside the spring, a clear though not copious spring, which rises a little to the south of the great building from a fissure in the rock. Fountains so clear are rare in this country, and the existence of this one probably determined the site of the great building itself. It flows into a small pool, and is then lost, being too small to form a rivulet. No trace of man's hand is seen round it or on the margin of the pool, but those who worshipped in the temple of Zimbabwye doubtless worshipped this fountain also, for that is one of the oldest and most widely diffused forms of worship in the world. Restless nature will some day overthrow the walls of the temple, which she is piercing with the roots of shrubs and entwining with the shoots of climbing wild vines, and then only the fountain will be left.