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It would be impossible to find a milder lot than the survivors and sons of the cruel and war-like Lobengula who once ruled here like a despot of old. His tribesmen the Matabeles were put in their place by a strong hand and they remain put. Bulawayo was the capital of Lobengula's kingdom. The word means "Place of Slaughter," and it did not belie the name.
Clive came down from Lobengula's country a few months ago protesting that there was an empire there, and finding very few that believed. Hastings studied a map of South Africa in a corrugated iron hut at Johannesburg ten years ago. Since then he has altered the map considerably to the advantage of the Empire, but the heart of the Empire is set on ballot-boxes and small lies.
Although the old chief had granted the concession, no one trusted him and Jameson and Selous had to feel their way, sleep under arms every night, and build highways as they went. Upon Lobengula's suggestion it was decided to occupy Mashonaland first. This was achieved without any trouble and the British flag was raised on what is now the site of Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia.
Finally, goaded thereto and justified therein by Lobengula's continued cruelties, his raids on the defenceless Mashonas, and his threats to the English, Dr. Jameson had led another expedition against the King himself in his stronghold of Bulawayo.
In the days immediately following the first Matabele war Rhodes had more trouble with concession-hunters than with the savages, the Boers, or the Portuguese. Nearly every free-lance in the territory produced some fake document to which Lobengula's alleged mark was affixed and offered it to Rhodes at an excessive price.
"I never saw a lion as black as this, except once beyond Buluwayo on the borders of Lobengula's country," I said by way of making conversation. "Curious," answered the stranger, "for that's where I shot the brute a few months ago. I tried to keep the whole skin but the white ants got at it." "Been trading up there?" I asked. "Nothing so useful," he said. "Just idling and shooting.
"If so I have heard plenty about you up in Lobengula's country, and of your wonderful shooting." "Yes," I replied, "but as for the shooting, natives always exaggerate." "They never exaggerated about mine," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "Anyhow I am very glad to see you in the flesh, though in the spirit you rather bored me because I heard too much of you.
Whatever may have been Lobengula's private wishes and opinions, it soon became evident that the gathering of the white men upon their borders, and in a country which they claimed by right of conquest if they did not occupy it, was most distasteful to the more warlike sections of the Matabele.
The Rhodesians were men of few words. They were men of action; of the same blood as the gallant party who, under Major Wilson, fought against thousands of Matabele until the last cartridge had been fired and the last man fell with his face to the foe under the keen stabbing-spears of Lobengula's warriors. The enemies that were threatening them were of a worse type.
Under these circumstances Major Forbes instructed Major Wilson and eighteen men to go forward and reconnoitre along Lobengula's spoor; the understanding seeming to have been that the party was to return by sundown, but that if it did not return it was, if necessary, to be supported by the whole column. With this patrol went Mr.
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