[56] It is in these woods that the honey bird is found, whereof the tale is told that it hunts about for the nests of wild bees in the hollows of trees, and when it has found one, flies close to a man so as to attract his notice, then flutters in front of him to the nest, and waits for him to take the honey out of the hollow (which it cannot itself reach), expecting and receiving a share of the spoil.
[57] The above was written in 1897. The subsequent extension of the railway from Mafeking to Bulawayo stimulated production, and in July, 1899, there were 115 stamps at work on the gold reefs, and the total value of the gold produced in Matabililand and Mashonaland (including the Tati concessions) was given by the Bulawayo Chamber of Mines as £192,679 for the preceding ten months. The average wages paid to natives were £2 a month. Some reefs are stated to have been worked to a depth of 500 feet.
[58] This very isolation and independence of the small native communities in Mashonaland retarded the pacification of the country during 1896-97. There were hardly any influential chiefs with whom to treat. But since 1897 it has been perfectly quiet.
[59] Mr. J. Hays Hammond, the eminent mining engineer, in North American Review for February, 1897.
[60] The total output of the Californian gold deposits up to the end of 1896 was £256,000,000. The total gold output of the Transvaal was in 1898 $78,070,761 (about £16,000,000), that of the United States $65,082,430. I take these and the other recent figures from a report by Mr. Hammond to the Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa Company.
[61] A little French book (L'Industrie Minière au Transvaal, published in 1897), which presents a careful examination of these questions, calculated at about thirty per cent. of the expenditure the savings in production which better legislation and administration might render possible.
[62] There are towns in England where the rate is only 13 per thousand.
[63] There are some mines of gold and coal in other parts, mostly on the east side of the country, with a small industrial population consisting chiefly of recent immigrants.
[64] Mr. Brand was chosen President when practising law in Cape Colony; and afterwards accepted, with the full assent of his citizens, a British order of knighthood.
[65] Revising this book in October, 1899, I leave the above passage as it was written in 1897, grieving to think that it describes what has now become a past, and that the future is likely to have far other things in store.