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It was hard by the path that led to the last hill-climb, ere you reached the burial-place. We camped out close beside it, two Mashona boys who had come to seek their fortunes in Bulawayo, and Edgar and I. When the morning light came I was up. When the sun rose I had all but finished my service.
Therefore, when I decided to visit Mashonaland, and the matter of suitable presents arose in my mind, I decided that I could not possibly offer anything more suitable and acceptable to the King of Mashona than the garb of a soldier such as a king wears. And, behold, there it is!" "Au!" ejaculated Lomalindela, regarding the little heap with new interest.
Later Great Britain declared that the ships had been seized because of the violation of a municipal ordinance forbidding British subjects to trade with the enemy. The Mashona, Beatrice and Sabine were British ships sailing under the English flag.
That noon and afternoon the disused road traveled through bush-veld. It had been ridden over so little in the last few years, that there was much wood-cutting now to be done. Our voorlooper was no scraggy piccanin, he was brawny and bearded, an expert Mashona woodman. Now the woods bowed beneath his sturdy stroke. But his labors took time.
This Mashona god was formerly bound to render an annual tribute to the king of the Matabele in the shape of four black oxen and one dance. A missionary has seen and described the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the royal hut.
So we waited for Sebastian to advance a pawn. Meanwhile, I toyed with South African farming not very successfully, I must admit. Nature did not design me for growing oats. I am no judge of oxen, and my views on the feeding of Kaffir sheep raised broad smiles on the black faces of my Mashona labourers. I still lodged at Tant Mettie's, as everybody called Mrs.
The arrival of a white man in the Mashona country was evidently a quite unique event, exciting the utmost curiosity in the minds of the inhabitants indeed, I subsequently learned that such a thing had never happened since the memorable visit of my friend Major Henderson and his partner, Van Raalte, consequently it was only a very few of the older men who had ever beheld a white man before; for as I rode along at a foot-pace, with Piet respectfully walking in my rear, the whole way was lined on either side by thousands of men, women, and children, who had turned out for the express purpose of beholding such an astonishing spectacle, this, it appeared, being rendered all the more extraordinary by the fact that horses were unknown to the Mashonas, and not one of them, save the half-dozen or so elders above-mentioned, had ever so much as heard of a mounted man!
He did not write much, and he did not come for five years. When he came he was not at first communicative. He seemed to take more interest than he used to do in the Mission, I noticed. He had always been a hero among the Mashona boys: that was no new thing. And I was thankful indeed to see that he had not lost his old artless art of making friends with them.
An idea prevalent as it seems in our Europe of old . . . the idea that when a witch in animal form is wounded, say by a blow or a shot, the natural wound will appear on the human body when the witch returns to her own person. But I have topsy-turvied in my tale. I saw the lion with my own eyes, his shaggy head haloed by the rising moon. The Mashona who was with me had far sharper eyes than mine.
"One of the original Rhodesian pioneers who received a concession from Lo Bengula and amassed a large fortune by the sale of gold-mining properties which proved to be of no especial value. He was tried at Salisbury in 1897 with the murder of two Mashona chiefs, and was acquitted.
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