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Updated: June 26, 2025
The falls were about twelve days' walk from the king's kraal, and they were accompanied thither by young Mr. Thomas, the son of the local missionary, two Kafir servants, and twenty native bearers supplied by Lo Bengula. The next thing that was heard of them was that they had all died through drinking poisoned water, full details of the manner of their deaths being sent down by Lo Bengula.
Sergeaunt that they should combine business with pleasure, and go on a mission to Lo Bengula, an offer which they accepted, and shortly afterwards started for Matabeleland with an interpreter and a few servants. They reached their destination in safety; and having concluded their business with the king, started on a visit to the Zambesi Falls on foot, leaving the interpreter with the wagon.
Then the English first found that it would be better to give us back our country. Now they are gone, and our country is free, and we will now once more live in friendship with Lo Bengula, as we lived in friendship with Umzilikatse, and such must be our friendship, that so long as there is one Boer and one Matabele living these two must remain friends.
Now I wish to send something to give Lo Bengula a present as a token of our friendship. I send for Lo Bengula with the gentleman who will bring him this letter a blanket and a handkerchief for his great wife, who is the mother of all the Matabele nation. I will one day come to see their friendship. The gentleman who brings the letter will tell you about all the work which I have to do here.
On this account do I wish to see Lo Bengula, and if I may live so long, and the country here become altogether settled, and the stink which the English brought is first blown away altogether, then I will still ride so far to reach Lo Bengula, and if he still has this letter then he will hear the words from the mouth of the man who now must speak with the pen upon paper, and who, therefore, cannot so easily tell him everything.
No public notice was taken of the matter, for the obvious reason that it was impossible to get at Lo Bengula to punish him; nor would it have been easy to come by legal evidence to disprove the ingenious story of the poisoned water, since anybody trying to reach the spot of the massacre would probably fall a victim to some similar accident before he got back again.
He was accompanied, in an unofficial capacity, amongst other gentlemen, by Captain Patterson and his son, Mr. J Sergeaunt; and when he returned to England, these two gentlemen remained behind to go on a shooting expedition. About this time Sir Bartle Frere was anxious to send a friendly mission to Lo Bengula, king of the Matabele, a branch of the Zulu tribe, living up towards the Zambesi.
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