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After dinner on the fourth day he saddled up and rode off to the Matopos, spent the night there, and was back in the office by 10.30 on the following day, "all the better for a night out." All this time the office work increased, and the anxiety of the General and his staff was doubled by reports of rebellion in Mashonaland.
Here the savages took refuge in caves and could not be driven out. You now reach one of the remarkable feats in the life of Cecil Rhodes. The moment that the second Matabele war began he hastened northward to the country that bore his name. As soon as the Matabeles took refuge in the Matopos he boldly went out to parley with them.
However, the tickets had been taken, and the splendidly null organization of their party had him in its grip. He went back from the Falls to Bulawayo, and was whisked out to Khami. Only an hour was allowed him to see the river. At the grave of the Matopos, he was allowed two hours. There a brooding Presence grappled with the languors of his pilgrimage.
The Matopos are a wild and desolate range. It is not until you are well beyond the granite outposts that there bursts upon you an immense open area, a sort of amphitheatre in which the Druids might have held their weird ritual. Directly ahead you see a battlement of boulders projected by some immemorial upheaval.
This work was well done, the enemy's exact whereabouts were ascertained, and the scouting ended in a glorious gallop back to camp after emptying a few guns into a party of savages attempting to cut off Baden-Powell's party. After this came battle. In the moonlight of the 19th July the little force, nearly a thousand strong, moved out into the Matopos, Baden-Powell going on alone as guide.
It has become the policy of the Home Government not to permit a relatively small white population to rule the natives. Whatever the influence, Rhodesia has had no trouble with the natives since Rhodes made the peace up in the hills of the Matopos. The moment that the war of force ended, another and bloodless war of words began and it has continued ever since.
In his boyhood, as we saw, he loved few things more than "exploring," and now he has but exchanged the woods of Tunbridge Wells for the Indian Jungle and the Welsh mountains for the Matopos. Happy the man who carries with him into middle-age the zest and aims of a clean boyhood. There is something invigorating, almost inspiring, in the contemplation of Baden-Powell's meridian of life.
After his feat in the Matopos the Matabeles called Rhodes "The Man Who Separated the Fighting Bulls." It was during this period in Rhodesia that Rhodes discovered the place which he called "The View of the World," and where his remains now lie in lonely grandeur.
His first move was towards Babyan's stronghold, Babyan being one of the great Matabele chiefs a chief great in the glorious days of Lobengula and who now occupied the central and important impi in the Matopos.
In the middle of July the reward came for all his independent scouting; he was chosen by Sir Frederick Carrington, as a man who knew the Matopos country and the whereabouts of the enemy, to act as guide to Colonel Plumer the officer chosen for the immediate direction of operations in the Matopos. With joy B.-P. flung down the pen and took up the sword.
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