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The bay of Zanzibar is in the form of a crescent, and on the south-western horn of it is built the city. On the east Zanzibar is bounded almost entirely by the Malagash Lagoon, an inlet of the sea. It penetrates to at least two hundred and fifty yards of the sea behind or south of Shangani Point.
TO make it clear how Major Wilson and his companions came to die on the banks of the Shangani on December 4, 1893, it will be necessary, very briefly, to sketch the events which led to the war between the English settlers in Mashonaland in South Africa and the Matabele tribe, an offshoot of the Zulu race. In October 1889, at the instance of Mr.
On November 29, however, Major Forbes, finding that he could make small progress with the wagons, sent them away, and proceeded with the best mounted men and two Maxims only, so that the actual force which reached the Shangani on the 3rd consisted of about one hundred and sixty men and a couple of machine guns.
On November 25 the column, three hundred strong and carrying with it three-quarter rations for twelve days, took up the King's wagon spoor about one mile from Shiloh, and followed it through much discomfort, caused by the constant rain and the lack of roads, till, on December S, a point was reached on the Shangani River, N.N.W. of Shiloh and distant from it about eighty miles.
King Lobengula and his warriors were halted on one bank of the Shangani River, and on the other Major Forbes, with a picked force of three hundred men, was coming up in pursuit. Although at the moment he did not know it, he also was being pursued by a force of Matabeles, who were gradually surrounding him.
During that haunting march with the Shangani Patrol, when the rice was cut down to a spoonful, and a horse had been killed to supply the men with food, Baden-Powell found time to note that "the men are singing and chaffing away as cheerfully as possible while they scoop the muddy water from the sand-hole for their tea." And he loves the soldier for all his little oddities.
Baden-Powell's familiarity with the names of his men's horses reminds one of his difficulty in swallowing horse-flesh during the hungry days with the Shangani Patrol: "It is one thing to say, 'I'll trouble you to pass the horse, please, but quite another to say, 'Give me another chunk of D15." He is a man who can grow very nearly as fond of his troop's horses as of his own.
Jameson, can be estimated. The Matabele were beaten in two pitched battles: that of the Shangani on October 25, and that of the Imbembezi on November 1. They fought bravely, even with desperation, but their valour was broken by the skill and the cool courage of the white man.
They also who lie low, they reap the benefit of it, for their story is immortal, and it will be told hundreds of years hence when it matters no more to them whether they died by shot and steel on the banks of the Shangani, or elsewhere in age and sickness.
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