From Fort Victoria to Fort Salisbury it is nearly two hundred miles, the country generally level, though studded, like parts of southern India, with isolated rocky hills, whose crags of granite or gneiss break under the sun and rain into strange and fantastic shapes. A people sufficiently advanced to erect fortifications might have made for themselves impregnable strongholds out of the tops of these kopjes. The timid Makalakas have in many places planted their huts in the midst of the huge detached masses into which the kopjes are cleft; but they have not known how to make their villages defensible, and have been content with piling up a few loose stones to close some narrow passage between the rocks, or surrounding their huts with a rough fence of thorn-bushes. We found one deserted village where upon each loose block there had been placed a rude erection of clay, covered at the top, and apparently intended for the storing of grain. Thus raised from the ground it was safer from wild beasts and from rain. All the dwelling huts but two had been burned. We entered these, and found the walls covered with the rudest possible representations of men and animals, drawn with charcoal, more coarsely than an average child of ten would draw, and far inferior in spirit to the figures which the Lapps of Norway will draw on a reindeer horn spoon, or the Red Indians of Dakota upon a calico cloak. Whether the village had perished by an accidental fire, or whether its inhabitants, relieved from that terror of the Matabili which drove them to hide amongst the rocks, had abandoned it for some spot in the plain below, there was no one to tell us. One curious trace of insecurity remained in a dry and light tree-trunk, which had been left standing against the side of a flat-topped rock some thirty feet high, with the lowest dozen feet too steep to be climbed. It had evidently served as a sort of ladder. By it the upper part of the rock might be gained, and when it had been pulled up, approach was cut off and the fugitives on the flat top might be safe, while the Matabili were plundering their stores of grain and killing their friends beneath.
All this eastern side of the country was frequently raided by the Matabili, whose home lay farther west towards Bulawayo. The Makalakas could offer no resistance, not only because they were poor fighters, but also because they were without cohesion. The clans were small and obeyed no common overlord. Most of the villages lived quite unconnected with one another, yielding obedience, often a doubtful obedience, to their own chief, but caring nothing for any other village. Among savages the ascendency of a comparatively numerous tribe which is drilled to fight, and which renders implicit obedience to its chief, is swift and complete. The Matabili when they entered this country had probably only ten or twelve thousand fighting men; but they conquered it without the slightest difficulty, for the inhabitants, though far more numerous, were divided into small communities, and did not attempt to offer any collective resistance. Then for more than half a century slaughter and pillage reigned over a tract of some ninety thousand square miles. Much of this tract, especially the eastern part, which we call Mashonaland, was well peopled by tribes who lived quietly, had plenty of cattle, tilled the soil, and continued to dig a little gold, as their forefathers had done for centuries. They were now mercilessly raided by the Matabili all the way from Lake Ngami on the west to the edge of the great plateau on the east, till large districts were depopulated and left desolate, the grown men having been all killed or chased away, the children either killed, or made slaves of, or taken as recruits into the Matabili army. Constant war and the sanguinary government of Lo Bengula reduced the number of the true Matabili, so that such recruiting became a necessity. Their successes filled the Matabili with an overweening confidence in their power. Through all South Africa they despised every native tribe, except that martial one which was ruled by Gungunhana on the eastern frontier of Mashonaland, and despised even the white men, thinking them but a handful. The indunas, who had visited London in 1891, endeavoured to warn them of the resources of the whites, and Lo Bengula himself was opposed to war. But the young braves, who, like Cetewayo's Zulus, desired to "wash their spears," overbore the reluctance of the monarch, only to perish in the war of 1893.
Towards Fort Salisbury the country rises and grows prettier as it shows signs of a more copious rainfall. New flowers appear, and the grass is greener. About twelve miles before the town is reached one crosses a considerable stream with a long, deep, clear pool among rocks, and is told of the misadventure of an English doctor who, after a hasty plunge into the pool, was drying himself on a flat stone just above the water when a crocodile suddenly raised its hideous snout, seized his leg in its jaws, and dragged him down. Fortunately his companions were close at hand and succeeded after a struggle in forcing the beast to drop its prey.
The town itself is built at the foot of a low, wooded hill, on the top of which stood the original fort, hastily constructed of loose stones in 1890, and occupied in serious earnest for defence during the Matabili war. It spreads over a wide space of ground, with houses scattered here and there, and has become, since the draining of the marshy land on the banks of a streamlet which runs through it, free from malaria and quite healthy. Though the sun heat was great in the end of October (for one is only eighteen degrees from the equator), the air was so fresh and dry that I could walk for miles in the full blaze of noon, and the nights were too cool to sit out on the stoep (the wooden verandah which one finds at the front of every South African house) without an overcoat. Just round the town the country is open and grassy, but the horizon in every direction is closed by woods. The views are far prettier than those from Bulawayo, and the position of the town makes it a better centre for the administration as well as the commerce of the Company's territories. It is only two hundred and twenty miles from the Zambesi at Tete, and only three hundred and seventy from the port of Beira. The Company did well to encourage the growth of Bulawayo immediately after the conquest of 1893, because it was necessary to explore and to establish order in the newest parts of its territory. But in the long run, and especially when the regions north of the Zambesi begin to be practically occupied, Bulawayo, standing in a corner of the country, will have to yield to the more imperial site of Fort Salisbury. The district which lies round the latter town is better watered than western Matabililand, and the soil richer both for pasture and for tillage. The rainfall for the year ending April, 1890, reached fifty-three inches, and the average is about forty.
Fort Salisbury is three years older than Bulawayo, and therefore much more advanced. It has even several churches. There is a colony of East Indians, who grow vegetables and get very high prices for them; and a considerable trade is done in supplying the needs of the mining districts to the north and west. Many gold-reefs lie out in those directions, and great hopes are entertained of their future, though at the time of my visit people were much busier in floating new companies to develop the mines than in taking steps for their actual development. Some very pretty country residences, in the style of Indian bungalows, have been built on the skirts of the wood a mile or two from the town; and street-lamps now light people to their homes along paths where four years ago lions were still encountered. The last lion recoiling in dismay from the first street lamp would be a good subject for a picture to illustrate the progress of Mashonaland.
CHAPTER XVI
FROM FORT SALISBURY TO THE SEA—MANICALAND AND THE PORTUGUESE TERRITORIES.
In Africa, moisture is everything. It makes the difference between fertility and barrenness; it makes the difference between a cheerful and a melancholy landscape. As one travels north-eastward from Palapshwye to Bulawayo, and from Bulawayo to Fort Salisbury, one passes by degrees from an arid and almost rainless land to a land of showers and flowing waters. In Bechuanaland there are, except for three months in the year, no streams at all. In Matabililand one begins to find perennial brooks. In Mashonaland there are at last rivers, sometimes with rocky banks and clear deep pools, which (like that just mentioned) tempt one to bathe and risk the terrible snap of a crocodile's jaws. Thus eastern Mashonaland is far more attractive than the countries which I have described in the last two chapters. It has beautiful and even striking scenery. The soil, where the granitic rocks do not come too near the surface, is usually fertile, and cultivation is easier than in the regions to the south-west, because the rains are more copious. There are many places round Fort Salisbury and on the way thence to Mtali and Massikessi where a man might willingly settle down to spend his days, so genial and so full of beauty is the nature around him. And as the land is high, it is also healthy. Except in a few of the valley bottoms, fever need not be feared, even after the rains.