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And I also greatly wondered what the fellow could possibly have meant by his mysterious talk of a time before the Mashonas came to the country, when it was inhabited by a people whom he named the Monomotapa, who built great cities of brick and stone, worked the gold mines, and made gold ornaments for their women.
Under irrigation, citrus fruits, oats and barley do well. Cattle are a bulwark of Rhodesian prosperity. The immense pasturage areas are reminiscent of Texas and Montana. For a hundred years before the white settlers came, the Matabeles and the Mashonas raised live stock. The natives still own about 700,000 head, nearly as many as the whites.
I looked hard at the picture. 'Those two Mashonas are like the children that were burnt in a kraal this way, I said pointing. 'I tried to dress their burns but they both died. Dick looked up as I pointed, but he said nothing. He eschews dwelling on painful subjects very often, I notice. 'Don't you think that they are like? I asked. 'Kaffir children favor one another, Dick said sagely.
Peter Halket stood below the tree with the knife in his hand. The noise roused the whole camp: the men on guard came running; guns were fired: and the half-sleeping men came rushing, grasping their weapons. There was a sound of firing at the little tree; and the cry went round the camp, "The Mashonas are releasing the spy!"
It was a beautiful and very fertile country, taken as a whole, and the nearer that we drew to Gwanda the more forcibly was this fact borne in upon me, as also was the further fact that the Mashonas were a very powerful nation, so far at least as numbers were concerned; for every kraal at which we arrived was bigger and more important in every way than the one that preceded it.
Terrified, half exterminated indeed, as they were by these constant and unprovoked onslaughts, the Mashonas welcomed with delight the occupation of their country by white men, and thankfully placed themselves under the protection of the Chartered Company.
All men were brothers, and God loved a black man as well as a white; Mashonas and Matabele were poor ignorant folk, and we had to take care of them. And then he started out, that we ought to let this man go; we ought to give him food for the road, and tell him to go back to his people, and tell them we hadn't come to take their land but to teach them and love them.
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 considered his business prospects. When he had served his time as volunteer he would have a large piece of land given him, and the Mashonas and Matabeles would have all their land taken away from them in time, and the Chartered Company would pass a law that they had to work for the white men; and he, Peter Halket, would make them work for him. He would make money.
Between this region which was then a Free State, and the Transvaal, was an immense and unappropriated country, a sort of no man's land, rich with minerals, teeming with forests and peopled by savages. Two territories, Matabeleland, ruled by Lobengula, and Mashonaland, inhabited by the Mashonas, who were to all intents and purposes vassals to Lobengula, were the prize portions.
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