The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThrough South AfricaThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Through South AfricaAuthor: Henry M. StanleyRelease date: June 20, 2010 [eBook #32913]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH SOUTH AFRICA ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Through South AfricaAuthor: Henry M. StanleyRelease date: June 20, 2010 [eBook #32913]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
Title: Through South Africa
Author: Henry M. Stanley
Author: Henry M. Stanley
Release date: June 20, 2010 [eBook #32913]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH SOUTH AFRICA ***
Henry M. Stanley, MP, DCL"Through South Africa"
Preface.This little volume consists of the letters I wrote from Bulawayo, Johannesburg and Pretoria for the journalSouth Africa, which is exclusively devoted to matters relating to the region whence it derives its title. Each letter contains the researches of a week. As the public had already a sufficiency of books dealing with the history, geography, politics, raids and revolts, I confined myself to such impressions as one, who since 1867 had been closely connected with equatorial, northern and western Africa, might derive from a first view of the interior of South Africa. Being in no way associated with any political or pecuniary concern relating to the country, it struck me that my open-minded, disinterested and fresh impressions might be of some interest to others, who like myself had only a general sympathy with its civilisation and commercial development. And as I had necessarily to qualify myself for appearing in a journal which had for years treated of South African subjects, it involved much personal inquiry and careful consideration of facts communicated to roe, and an impartial weighing of their merits. To this motive, whatever may be the value of what I have written, I am greatly indebted personally; for henceforth I must carry with me for a long time a valuable kind of knowledge concerning the colonies and states I traversed, which no number of books could have given to me.If, from my point of judgment, I differ in any way from other writers, all I care to urge is, that I have had some experience of my own in several new lands like the South African interior, and I have lived long enough to have seen the effects of what was good and what was bad policy in them. I prefer peaceful relations between England and the Boers of South Africa, if possible; I love what is just, fair, and best to and for both Britons and Boers. I naturally admire large-minded enterprise. I pity narrow-mindedness, and dislike to see a people refusing to advance, when all the world is so sympathetic and helpfully inclined towards them. These explanations, I think, will enable anyone to understand the spirit of these letters.A curious thing occurred in connection with my sudden departure for South Africa. In the latter part of September, 1897, I was debating with my family, at a seaside hotel near Dieppe, as to the place we should visit after the adjournment of Parliament in 1898. After discussing the merits of many suggestions, it was finally determined that we should all try South Africa, because it was said to have such a divine climate; the country was, moreover, so interesting politically, and as it loomed so much in public interest it would be worth while to obtain some personal knowledge of South Africans at home. We had scarcely arrived at this conclusion, when the postman brought to us a telegram, which, to our intense surprise, was a request from the Bulawayo Festivities Committee that I would go to Bulawayo to attend the celebration of the arrival of the Great Peninsular Railway at the Capital of Matabele Land. We regarded it as a strange coincidence.This opportunity to visit Bulawayo I considered rather premature, as towards the end of autumn many engagements crowd upon one, but after another animated family council it was resolved that I should accept the invitation were it only to qualify myself as a pioneer for the ladies.We left Southampton on theNormanon the 9th October. I found then that there were five other members of the House of Commons on board—Messrs Saunderson, Llewellyn, Hayes Fisher, Peace, and Paullton, and the Duke of Roxburghe representing the House of Lords. Among the passengers there were Boers from Pretoria and Cape Colony, British Uitlanders from Johannesburg, English residents from the Cape and the two Dutch Republics, Afrikander farmers and vine-growers, and townspeople, some from the Cape District, others from the Eastern and Western Provinces, and not a few from Kimberley and Natal, besides a few ex-Raiders and Reformers. As may be imagined, there was no lack of instructive material, and naturally much divergence of political opinion. The smoking-room soon become like a debating club, but, notwithstanding the frankness and partisan character of the debates, the good temper with which each person delivered himself of his opinions was most astonishing.From the Boers and Afrikanders I heard not one favourable remark about England, but all indulged in banter and irony, to prove that argument with them was of no avail. So extreme was their dislike that they even said “English servants and clerks are of no use, and they are most unreliable, as for instance,” and here followed incidents to prove what they said. While the English were false and could not be trusted, it was said that the Germans were “good” in the colonial sense, and made the best citizens. They were industrious and thrifty, and their improved condition did not alter their habits. The indenturing of the Bechuana rebels was a subject upon which much was said on both sides. But a Boer’s way of putting it was characteristic. “England, you say, considers it illegal. Ah, well, the English know nothing of the matter, and what they say don’t count. Rose-Innes, however, ought to have known better. Had he been asked by a Cape farmer whether, to keep the rebels from starving, we should give them work to do for wages, Rose-Innes would have said, ‘It is a good thing, and the best that can be done for them;’ but with the view of forming a party against the Government, of course, he denounces indenturing as illegal and iniquitous.” I have cited these extracts to show the process of how we became initiated into South African politics.The treatment of natives by the Rhodesian Government was, according to the general opinion of Cape people, more liberal than they deserved, and such as any white colonist of no matter what country would approve. It was said, “Why, if we were to be governed by what these sentimental English societies—referring to the A.P.S.—think is right, we should have to abandon Africa altogether, for neither our lives nor property would be safe. Law-abiding men and lawless natives cannot live together unless one or the other is compelled to, and as we have taken the country and intend to live in it, common sense tells us that the natives must submit to the same law under which we must live.”The greatest majority by far denounced the Raid, and yet everyone spoke kindly of the personality of Dr Jameson. A gentleman from the Eastern Province informed me that the Jameson family has suffered greatly in public estimation. One of the brothers who lived at King Williamstown had felt himself obliged to leave the Province and return to England, and if the Doctor succeeded in being elected to the Cape Parliament, it was said he would be certain to meet with much unpleasantness.I believe there were 1,097 souls on board theNormanon this voyage. The noise was therefore terrific and continuous, and if any of the weaker constitutions suffered as much as I did through want of sleep and rest, they must on arrival at Cape Town have been in a pitiable state. Above and below it was perpetual unrest and uproar. Though large and beautiful, these Cape steamers are badly designed internally, and the cabins are extremely small, and so arranged that a passenger is subject to the caprices of his neighbours on either side. My neighbours were unfortunately quite ignorant of the meaning of the word “considerate.” When an Ismay, such as he who reformed the Anglo-American service, becomes interested in the passenger traffic to the Cape, he will find a multitude of little things to improve. On returning to England, I found the S.S.Moormuch superior for passenger accommodation.The inconveniences arising from an overcrowded steamer are too many to be disposed of in a paragraph, but it is enough to say that I was uncommonly glad when the voyage was ended, and I was free to seek a hotel.It must impress anyone who takes a sympathetic interest in what he sees in South Africa, that in some things the country is far behind New Zealand, Tasmania, or any of the Australian Colonies. It is more backward than any of them in its hotels. There are, within my knowledge, only three hotels in all South Africa to which I would venture to recommend a lady to go. South Africans, of course, are able to endure anything, and as the Veld is comparatively but a step from most towns, any place that offers a decent lodging must be regarded by the men at least as infinitely superior to an ox-wagon, a zinc hut, or a farm shed. But I am thinking more of the effect such hotels as those of Cape Town must have on people from Europe. This city, which is the capital of Cape Colony, contains a population of about 52,000, exclusive of the suburbs, but it does not possess a single hotel that would bear comparison with those of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin. The very best is only just suited for commercial travellers, who must needs be satisfied with whatever may offer. The suburbs, however, which are peopled by about 32,000—and it is well that invalids and tourists should remember it—contain hotels where rest and quiet may be found, in the midst of oak and fir groves and scenes of surpassing beauty. No city that I know of in our colonies possesses superior suburbs. They are simply lovely. They are stretched along the base of Table Mountain, and an entire day’s carriage-drive would not exhaust the exquisite beauty for which the suburbs of Cape Town are famed.Cape Colony possesses three valuable assets, which seem to me to have received scant attention. A traveller who has visited Southern California and Arizona will understand immediately he visits South Africa what fortunes might be made of the waste land, the rainfall, and the glorious climate with which Nature has blessed it. The land is unworthily despised, the rainfall is allowed to waste itself in thirsty sands deep down beneath the level of hungry plains, while the climate does not seem to have suggested to any capitalist that a revenue superior to that obtained from the Main Reef at Johannesburg might be drawn from it. The leaders of South African enterprise appear all absorbed in diamonds, gold mines, or dynamite.If I were to follow the authorities of Worsfold in his “South Africa,” pages 126, 127, I should have to admit that this indifference to the land, the rainfall and climate, is due to the Boers. Captain Percival, in 1796, a hundred years ago, wrote:—“The Dutch farmers never assist the soil by flooding; their only labour is sowing the seed, leaving the rest to chance and the excellent climate.”“No part of the world has had its natural advantages so abused as the Cape of Good Hope. The very minds and dispositions of the settlers interfere with every plan of improvement and public utility.”It may be that the Boers do cling to old-fashioned ideas somewhat more tenaciously than they ought to do; but they cannot possibly interfere with capitalists uniting to build up-to-date hotels on the most salubrious and scenic sites in Cape Colony, and beautifying their neighbourhoods with shade trees and gardens, so that the thousands of invalids who throng the watering-places and hydros of Europe, endure the snows of Davos, and the winter of the Engadine, might be tempted to try the Karroo of the Colony. They did not interfere with John D. Logan when he bought 100,000 acres of the Karroo at Matjesfontein and proceeded to turn it to remunerative account. They do not object to private companies or individuals making irrigation works, or planting groves, which thrive so wonderfully; and as Cape Colony has been British for over ninety years, it is rather hard that the Boers should bear all the blame.Now the Cape Government may well plead guilty to having left many things undone which they ought to have done. I sincerely believe that the time will come when the climate, which has the quality of making old men young, and the consumptive strong, will become universally known and appreciated; but to attract invalids from the crowded Riviera and Switzerland, visitors must not be lodged in third-rate hotels, near noisy tram-lines, and fed on tinned meats.I was about concluding this preface, when a South African appeared at my house and drew my attention to the Scriptural quotation in my Johannesburg letter—“It is expedient that one man should die for many,” and begged me to make my meaning clear. I read the paragraph over again, and as I see that to a wilfully contentious mind it might be construed into a meaning very different to what I intended, I will try to make it clearer.Certain Johannesburgers at the Club had related to us the story of the various efforts they had made to obtain their political rights, and the reforms which were needed to work their mines profitably; and after they had finished, I replied that everyone was well aware of the demonstrations, mass-meetings, speeches, petitions to Kruger, menaces, Jameson’s Raid, and so on, and they themselves had just informed me how often they had yielded to bribery of officials, and yet withal they confessed they were not a whit further advanced. Their position had not been bettered, but was somewhat worse. “The corrective of it all,” I said, “seems to me to lie in the Scriptural verse, ‘it is expedient that one man should die for many.’ There is a vast mass of sympathy in England with you, but it is inert and inactive. To make that sympathy a living force in your behalf, it must be proved that you are in earnest, that nothing sordid lies behind this dissatisfaction. You must prove that you have a cause for which you are willing to suffer, even to the death. You say that you can do nothing without arms. You do not need any arms that I see. If you fight with weapons, you will be overcome, and I do not think your defeat will excite great sympathy. But if it be true that the impositions on you are intolerable, your taxes heavy, the claims of Government extortionate, and the demands excessive, why submit to them? It seems to me that if you were all united in the determination to pay no more of these claims, taxes and bribes, and folded your arms and dared them to do their worst, that Kruger must either yield or proceed to compulsion of some kind. He would probably confiscate your property, or put you in prison or banish you. Whatever he does that is violent and tyrannical will cause such an explosion of opinion that will prove to you all that England does not forget her children. No cause was ever won without suffering, and I am afraid that your cause, however good it may be, cannot be won without sacrifice and suffering of some kind. The leader of any movement is sure to be the object of a tyrant’s hate, and the leader or leaders of your cause ought not to venture in it without being prepared to suffer and endure whatever ills may follow.”Having explained the Scriptural quotation at the request of others, I now proceed to be more definite in my own behalf with regard to the statement in the same letter, that “we cannot interfere until we know what Johannesburg has resolved upon doing.”A gentleman present said that, during his recent visit to London, an English statesman asked him, “What would be the effect of sending 30,000 British troops to the Transvaal.” Whereupon he answered that he would be the first man who would take up his rifle against them.This gentleman was an Englishman by birth. He had been the loudest and the most eloquent against the British Government for their disregard of the rights guaranteed by the Convention of 1884, he knew as well as anyone present the tenour of the despatches that had been exchanged between the British Government and the Transvaal Republic, and was perfectly acquainted with the patient and continuous efforts the Colonial Office had made to obtain a just consideration for the grievances of the Uitlanders. It was obvious to us that, if a British statesman had asked such a question, it must have been with the view of knowing—if diplomacy failed—what result would follow the final attempt to induce Kruger to listen to reason. From the shock this declaration from such a prominent Uitlander gave me and a colleague of mine, we understood what the feelings of the statesman referred to must have been, and we had no option left than to suppose the Uitlanders, despite all their clamour and affected indignation against the Transvaal Government, would prefer the Colonial Office to continue writing despatches than to take coercive measures. It must be an immense relief to Englishmen all over the country, as well as it was to me, to know that we were not expected to be at the trouble and cost of sending troops, and we may all feel sure that as despatch-writing is considered to be so efficacious, the Colonial Office will not begrudge the labour nor spare expense in stationery.At any rate, seeing that the Uitlanders have told us frankly what to expect if we resort to force for their assistance, it is too obvious that nothing more can be done by our Government further than courteous diplomacy permits—until the united voice and the united action of the whole body of the Uitlanders certify to us in what other way England can serve them.Henry M. Stanley.London, January 28th, 1898.
This little volume consists of the letters I wrote from Bulawayo, Johannesburg and Pretoria for the journalSouth Africa, which is exclusively devoted to matters relating to the region whence it derives its title. Each letter contains the researches of a week. As the public had already a sufficiency of books dealing with the history, geography, politics, raids and revolts, I confined myself to such impressions as one, who since 1867 had been closely connected with equatorial, northern and western Africa, might derive from a first view of the interior of South Africa. Being in no way associated with any political or pecuniary concern relating to the country, it struck me that my open-minded, disinterested and fresh impressions might be of some interest to others, who like myself had only a general sympathy with its civilisation and commercial development. And as I had necessarily to qualify myself for appearing in a journal which had for years treated of South African subjects, it involved much personal inquiry and careful consideration of facts communicated to roe, and an impartial weighing of their merits. To this motive, whatever may be the value of what I have written, I am greatly indebted personally; for henceforth I must carry with me for a long time a valuable kind of knowledge concerning the colonies and states I traversed, which no number of books could have given to me.
If, from my point of judgment, I differ in any way from other writers, all I care to urge is, that I have had some experience of my own in several new lands like the South African interior, and I have lived long enough to have seen the effects of what was good and what was bad policy in them. I prefer peaceful relations between England and the Boers of South Africa, if possible; I love what is just, fair, and best to and for both Britons and Boers. I naturally admire large-minded enterprise. I pity narrow-mindedness, and dislike to see a people refusing to advance, when all the world is so sympathetic and helpfully inclined towards them. These explanations, I think, will enable anyone to understand the spirit of these letters.
A curious thing occurred in connection with my sudden departure for South Africa. In the latter part of September, 1897, I was debating with my family, at a seaside hotel near Dieppe, as to the place we should visit after the adjournment of Parliament in 1898. After discussing the merits of many suggestions, it was finally determined that we should all try South Africa, because it was said to have such a divine climate; the country was, moreover, so interesting politically, and as it loomed so much in public interest it would be worth while to obtain some personal knowledge of South Africans at home. We had scarcely arrived at this conclusion, when the postman brought to us a telegram, which, to our intense surprise, was a request from the Bulawayo Festivities Committee that I would go to Bulawayo to attend the celebration of the arrival of the Great Peninsular Railway at the Capital of Matabele Land. We regarded it as a strange coincidence.
This opportunity to visit Bulawayo I considered rather premature, as towards the end of autumn many engagements crowd upon one, but after another animated family council it was resolved that I should accept the invitation were it only to qualify myself as a pioneer for the ladies.
We left Southampton on theNormanon the 9th October. I found then that there were five other members of the House of Commons on board—Messrs Saunderson, Llewellyn, Hayes Fisher, Peace, and Paullton, and the Duke of Roxburghe representing the House of Lords. Among the passengers there were Boers from Pretoria and Cape Colony, British Uitlanders from Johannesburg, English residents from the Cape and the two Dutch Republics, Afrikander farmers and vine-growers, and townspeople, some from the Cape District, others from the Eastern and Western Provinces, and not a few from Kimberley and Natal, besides a few ex-Raiders and Reformers. As may be imagined, there was no lack of instructive material, and naturally much divergence of political opinion. The smoking-room soon become like a debating club, but, notwithstanding the frankness and partisan character of the debates, the good temper with which each person delivered himself of his opinions was most astonishing.
From the Boers and Afrikanders I heard not one favourable remark about England, but all indulged in banter and irony, to prove that argument with them was of no avail. So extreme was their dislike that they even said “English servants and clerks are of no use, and they are most unreliable, as for instance,” and here followed incidents to prove what they said. While the English were false and could not be trusted, it was said that the Germans were “good” in the colonial sense, and made the best citizens. They were industrious and thrifty, and their improved condition did not alter their habits. The indenturing of the Bechuana rebels was a subject upon which much was said on both sides. But a Boer’s way of putting it was characteristic. “England, you say, considers it illegal. Ah, well, the English know nothing of the matter, and what they say don’t count. Rose-Innes, however, ought to have known better. Had he been asked by a Cape farmer whether, to keep the rebels from starving, we should give them work to do for wages, Rose-Innes would have said, ‘It is a good thing, and the best that can be done for them;’ but with the view of forming a party against the Government, of course, he denounces indenturing as illegal and iniquitous.” I have cited these extracts to show the process of how we became initiated into South African politics.
The treatment of natives by the Rhodesian Government was, according to the general opinion of Cape people, more liberal than they deserved, and such as any white colonist of no matter what country would approve. It was said, “Why, if we were to be governed by what these sentimental English societies—referring to the A.P.S.—think is right, we should have to abandon Africa altogether, for neither our lives nor property would be safe. Law-abiding men and lawless natives cannot live together unless one or the other is compelled to, and as we have taken the country and intend to live in it, common sense tells us that the natives must submit to the same law under which we must live.”
The greatest majority by far denounced the Raid, and yet everyone spoke kindly of the personality of Dr Jameson. A gentleman from the Eastern Province informed me that the Jameson family has suffered greatly in public estimation. One of the brothers who lived at King Williamstown had felt himself obliged to leave the Province and return to England, and if the Doctor succeeded in being elected to the Cape Parliament, it was said he would be certain to meet with much unpleasantness.
I believe there were 1,097 souls on board theNormanon this voyage. The noise was therefore terrific and continuous, and if any of the weaker constitutions suffered as much as I did through want of sleep and rest, they must on arrival at Cape Town have been in a pitiable state. Above and below it was perpetual unrest and uproar. Though large and beautiful, these Cape steamers are badly designed internally, and the cabins are extremely small, and so arranged that a passenger is subject to the caprices of his neighbours on either side. My neighbours were unfortunately quite ignorant of the meaning of the word “considerate.” When an Ismay, such as he who reformed the Anglo-American service, becomes interested in the passenger traffic to the Cape, he will find a multitude of little things to improve. On returning to England, I found the S.S.Moormuch superior for passenger accommodation.
The inconveniences arising from an overcrowded steamer are too many to be disposed of in a paragraph, but it is enough to say that I was uncommonly glad when the voyage was ended, and I was free to seek a hotel.
It must impress anyone who takes a sympathetic interest in what he sees in South Africa, that in some things the country is far behind New Zealand, Tasmania, or any of the Australian Colonies. It is more backward than any of them in its hotels. There are, within my knowledge, only three hotels in all South Africa to which I would venture to recommend a lady to go. South Africans, of course, are able to endure anything, and as the Veld is comparatively but a step from most towns, any place that offers a decent lodging must be regarded by the men at least as infinitely superior to an ox-wagon, a zinc hut, or a farm shed. But I am thinking more of the effect such hotels as those of Cape Town must have on people from Europe. This city, which is the capital of Cape Colony, contains a population of about 52,000, exclusive of the suburbs, but it does not possess a single hotel that would bear comparison with those of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin. The very best is only just suited for commercial travellers, who must needs be satisfied with whatever may offer. The suburbs, however, which are peopled by about 32,000—and it is well that invalids and tourists should remember it—contain hotels where rest and quiet may be found, in the midst of oak and fir groves and scenes of surpassing beauty. No city that I know of in our colonies possesses superior suburbs. They are simply lovely. They are stretched along the base of Table Mountain, and an entire day’s carriage-drive would not exhaust the exquisite beauty for which the suburbs of Cape Town are famed.
Cape Colony possesses three valuable assets, which seem to me to have received scant attention. A traveller who has visited Southern California and Arizona will understand immediately he visits South Africa what fortunes might be made of the waste land, the rainfall, and the glorious climate with which Nature has blessed it. The land is unworthily despised, the rainfall is allowed to waste itself in thirsty sands deep down beneath the level of hungry plains, while the climate does not seem to have suggested to any capitalist that a revenue superior to that obtained from the Main Reef at Johannesburg might be drawn from it. The leaders of South African enterprise appear all absorbed in diamonds, gold mines, or dynamite.
If I were to follow the authorities of Worsfold in his “South Africa,” pages 126, 127, I should have to admit that this indifference to the land, the rainfall and climate, is due to the Boers. Captain Percival, in 1796, a hundred years ago, wrote:—
“The Dutch farmers never assist the soil by flooding; their only labour is sowing the seed, leaving the rest to chance and the excellent climate.”
“No part of the world has had its natural advantages so abused as the Cape of Good Hope. The very minds and dispositions of the settlers interfere with every plan of improvement and public utility.”
It may be that the Boers do cling to old-fashioned ideas somewhat more tenaciously than they ought to do; but they cannot possibly interfere with capitalists uniting to build up-to-date hotels on the most salubrious and scenic sites in Cape Colony, and beautifying their neighbourhoods with shade trees and gardens, so that the thousands of invalids who throng the watering-places and hydros of Europe, endure the snows of Davos, and the winter of the Engadine, might be tempted to try the Karroo of the Colony. They did not interfere with John D. Logan when he bought 100,000 acres of the Karroo at Matjesfontein and proceeded to turn it to remunerative account. They do not object to private companies or individuals making irrigation works, or planting groves, which thrive so wonderfully; and as Cape Colony has been British for over ninety years, it is rather hard that the Boers should bear all the blame.
Now the Cape Government may well plead guilty to having left many things undone which they ought to have done. I sincerely believe that the time will come when the climate, which has the quality of making old men young, and the consumptive strong, will become universally known and appreciated; but to attract invalids from the crowded Riviera and Switzerland, visitors must not be lodged in third-rate hotels, near noisy tram-lines, and fed on tinned meats.
I was about concluding this preface, when a South African appeared at my house and drew my attention to the Scriptural quotation in my Johannesburg letter—“It is expedient that one man should die for many,” and begged me to make my meaning clear. I read the paragraph over again, and as I see that to a wilfully contentious mind it might be construed into a meaning very different to what I intended, I will try to make it clearer.
Certain Johannesburgers at the Club had related to us the story of the various efforts they had made to obtain their political rights, and the reforms which were needed to work their mines profitably; and after they had finished, I replied that everyone was well aware of the demonstrations, mass-meetings, speeches, petitions to Kruger, menaces, Jameson’s Raid, and so on, and they themselves had just informed me how often they had yielded to bribery of officials, and yet withal they confessed they were not a whit further advanced. Their position had not been bettered, but was somewhat worse. “The corrective of it all,” I said, “seems to me to lie in the Scriptural verse, ‘it is expedient that one man should die for many.’ There is a vast mass of sympathy in England with you, but it is inert and inactive. To make that sympathy a living force in your behalf, it must be proved that you are in earnest, that nothing sordid lies behind this dissatisfaction. You must prove that you have a cause for which you are willing to suffer, even to the death. You say that you can do nothing without arms. You do not need any arms that I see. If you fight with weapons, you will be overcome, and I do not think your defeat will excite great sympathy. But if it be true that the impositions on you are intolerable, your taxes heavy, the claims of Government extortionate, and the demands excessive, why submit to them? It seems to me that if you were all united in the determination to pay no more of these claims, taxes and bribes, and folded your arms and dared them to do their worst, that Kruger must either yield or proceed to compulsion of some kind. He would probably confiscate your property, or put you in prison or banish you. Whatever he does that is violent and tyrannical will cause such an explosion of opinion that will prove to you all that England does not forget her children. No cause was ever won without suffering, and I am afraid that your cause, however good it may be, cannot be won without sacrifice and suffering of some kind. The leader of any movement is sure to be the object of a tyrant’s hate, and the leader or leaders of your cause ought not to venture in it without being prepared to suffer and endure whatever ills may follow.”
Having explained the Scriptural quotation at the request of others, I now proceed to be more definite in my own behalf with regard to the statement in the same letter, that “we cannot interfere until we know what Johannesburg has resolved upon doing.”
A gentleman present said that, during his recent visit to London, an English statesman asked him, “What would be the effect of sending 30,000 British troops to the Transvaal.” Whereupon he answered that he would be the first man who would take up his rifle against them.
This gentleman was an Englishman by birth. He had been the loudest and the most eloquent against the British Government for their disregard of the rights guaranteed by the Convention of 1884, he knew as well as anyone present the tenour of the despatches that had been exchanged between the British Government and the Transvaal Republic, and was perfectly acquainted with the patient and continuous efforts the Colonial Office had made to obtain a just consideration for the grievances of the Uitlanders. It was obvious to us that, if a British statesman had asked such a question, it must have been with the view of knowing—if diplomacy failed—what result would follow the final attempt to induce Kruger to listen to reason. From the shock this declaration from such a prominent Uitlander gave me and a colleague of mine, we understood what the feelings of the statesman referred to must have been, and we had no option left than to suppose the Uitlanders, despite all their clamour and affected indignation against the Transvaal Government, would prefer the Colonial Office to continue writing despatches than to take coercive measures. It must be an immense relief to Englishmen all over the country, as well as it was to me, to know that we were not expected to be at the trouble and cost of sending troops, and we may all feel sure that as despatch-writing is considered to be so efficacious, the Colonial Office will not begrudge the labour nor spare expense in stationery.
At any rate, seeing that the Uitlanders have told us frankly what to expect if we resort to force for their assistance, it is too obvious that nothing more can be done by our Government further than courteous diplomacy permits—until the united voice and the united action of the whole body of the Uitlanders certify to us in what other way England can serve them.
Henry M. Stanley.
London, January 28th, 1898.
Chapter One.Bulawayo, November 5, 1897.This extraordinary town does not disappoint expectations by its progress or present condition. It is in about as advanced a state as it could well be, considering the troubles it has endured. War and cattle-plague have retarded the progressive growth of a town that would have been by this, judging from the spirit of the people, a phenomenon in a century which has seen cities grow like mushrooms. It is cast on broad lines; its streets rival those of Washington for breadth, and its houses occupy as much space as decency requires, for unless they were pulled down and scattered over their respective lots, it is scarcely possible, with due respect to height, that they could occupy more.Bulawayo.Its situation, however, does not approach what I had anticipated to find. From its association with Lo Bengula, the dread Matabele despot on whose single word hung life and death, I had expected to find Bulawayo situate on a commanding eminence, looking down on broad lowlands and far-reaching views that fed the despot’s pride of power; instead of which we found it squatted low on a reddish plain, the ridges of its houses scarcely higher than the thorn bush that surrounds it. There are no hills or eminences anywhere in view, whence a large prospect could be obtained. In fact, the greater part of South Africa appears different to what I had imagined. Probably the partiality of all South African writers for Dutch terms had contributed to give me erroneous impressions. When I read Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid’s descriptions of the West, I fancied I knew what a prairie or plain was, and when, years afterwards, I came in view of them my impressions were only confirmed. But high, low, and bushveld, andKarroo, etc., have been always indefinite terms to me, and so I came to conceive aspects of land which were different to the reality. For a thousand miles we have been travelling over very level or slightly undulating plains, bush-covered over large spaces, the rest being genuine grassy prairie. After a thousand mites, or nearly three days by rail, over a flat country of this description, one naturally thinks that the objective point of such a journey must be of a different character. Most of the guests were on thequi vivefor a pleasing change of scenery until we were within five minutes of Bulawayo station. All at once we caught sight of a few gleams of zinc roofs through the low thorn bush, and a single iron smoke-stack. When we came out of the bush, Bulawayo was spread out before us, squatted on what is undeniably a plain. This plain continues to be of the same character of levelness as far as Salisbury, ay, even as far as the northern edge of Mashonaland; it spreads out to Fort Victoria equally level; and as the land declines to N’gami and the Victoria Falls, it still retains the appearance of plains. Now, the wonder to me is, not that I am 1360 miles north of Cape Town, but that the railway limit should be fixed at Bulawayo, a mere bit of undistinguishable acreage in a flat area which extends to over half a million square miles. Why this place more than any other? There is no river near it, there is no topographic feature to distinguish it. Why not have continued this trunk line on to Salisbury, on to Tete, and the Zambesi? Why not have continued it on to the Victoria Falls?The New Railway.Considering that we have come all the way from London, 7300 miles away, to celebrate the arrival of the locomotive at Bulawayo, such questions may sound ungrateful, and considering that last night at the banquet every speaker had something favourable to say of the Bechuanaland Railway and its builders, such questions may be supposed to indicate disagreement with the general opinion. There is really no necessity to suppose anything of the kind. Both the builders and the railway deserve praise. The fact that some eight trains have already arrived at Bulawayo, and that every passenger expresses himself warmly as to the condition of the line, and the pleasure derived from the journey, ought to satisfy everyone that the railway is ready for traffic, and will serve for many years, I hope, to connect Bulawayo with Cape Town.But I want my readers to thoroughly understand what has been done, without prejudice to Bulawayo, the railway, or its builders. I am not so surprised at the railway, as at the length of time people in South Africa were content to be without it. The whole country seems to have been created for railway making. It offers as few difficulties as the London Embankment Hyde Park is extremely uneven as compared with it. For nearly a thousand miles the railway sleepers have been laid at intervals of thirty inches on the natural face of the land; the rails have been laid across these, and connected together; the native navvies have scraped a little soil together, sufficient to cover the steel sleepers; and the iron road was thus ready for traffic. In March, 1896, the railway was but a few miles beyond Mafeking—say, about 880 miles from Cape Town—on November 4, 1897, it is 1360 miles in length from Cape Town, showing a construction of 480 miles in 19 months. There is nothing remarkable in this. The Union Pacific Railway between Omaha and Denver progressed at three, four, even five miles a day, over a much more irregular surface; but then, of course, the navvies were Irishmen, who handled the shovel like experts, and the rails with the precision and skill of master workmen. Natives could not be expected to attain the proficiency and organisation of the American Celts.In one of the Cape Specials.Our special train left Cape Town on Sunday at 4 p.m. A corridor train of six coaches, marked Bulawayo, at an ordinary provincial-looking station, seemed somewhat strange. Had it been marked Ujiji, or Yambuya, it could not have been more so. Three of us were put in a compartment for four. The fourth berth was available for hand luggage. Soon after starting we were served with tea and biscuits, and were it not for the flat wilderness scenery we might have imagined ourselves in an International sleeping car. Time tables were also furnished us, from which we learned that we were due at Kimberley, 647 miles, at 10:15 p.m. on the next day, November 1; at Mafeking, 870 miles, at 3:12 p.m. on November 2; Palachwe, in Khama’s country, 1132 miles, at 12:47 p.m., November 3; and at Bulawayo, 1360 miles, at 9:30 a.m. on November 4, which would be ninety hours at fifteen miles per hour.It took us an hour to cross the Lowry Strait, which at no very distant period must have been covered by sea and separated the Cape Peninsula from the Continent.At 5:30 we arrived at the Paarl, 35 miles, a beautiful place suggestive of Italy with its vineyards, gardens and shrubbery, and lovingly enfolded by the Drakenstein Range. With its groves of fir and eucalyptus, bright sunshine, and pleasant-faced people, with picturesque mountains round about, it seemed a most desirable place.The Paarl Station and others we passed bear witness to the excellence of Cape railway administration. The names of the stations were boldly printed on japanned iron plates, and though the passage of so many trains crowded with distinguished strangers had drawn large assemblages of the Colonists, male and female, whites, mulattoes, and negroes, the cleanliness and orderliness that prevailed were very conspicuous.A Message to Mr Labouchere.At 6 p.m. we had passed Wellington, 45 miles, which went to prove the rate of travel. This town also drew from us admiring expressions for its picturesque situation in one of the folds of the Drakenstein, for the early summer green of its groves, vineyards, and fields, and its pretty white houses. I thought, as I marked the charming town and its church spires, and the sweet groves around, what a contrast it was to the time when the Hottentot reared his cattle in the valley, and the predatory bushman infested the neighbourhood, and preyed on ground game and goats.On the platform, among those who welcomed our coming, were a dozen Radical shoemakers lately arrived from Leicester. They charged Colonel Saunderson, M.P., my fellow traveller, with an expressive message to Mr Labouchere. It is too forcible and inelegant for print, but it admirably illustrates the rapidity with which Radicals become perverted by travel.Darkness found the train labouring through the mountainous defile of the Hex River. We could see but a loom of the rugged heights on either side, but from all accounts this part of the line is one of the show places which strangers are asked to note.At daylight we were well on the Karroo, which at first sight was all but a desert. However, we were not long on it before we all took to it kindly. The air was strangely appetising, and we could not help regarding it with benevolence. The engineers who designed the line must have been skilful men, and by the track, as the train curves in and out of narrowing valleys and broadening plains, we are led to suppose that the Continent slopes gently from the interior down to Table Bay. The railway is a surface line, without a single tunnel or any serious cutting. The gradients in some places are stiff, but a single engine finds no difficulty in surmounting them.At 4 p.m. of November 1 we reached the 458th mile from Cape Town, so that our rate of travel had been nineteen miles the hour. On tolerably level parts our speed, as timed by watch, was thirty miles; stoppages and steep gradients reduce this to nineteen miles.We were fast asleep by the time we reached Kimberley. Night, and the short pause we made, prevented any correct impressions of the chief city of the Diamond Fields. At half-past six of November 2 we woke up at Taungs, 731 miles. The small stream over which we entered the late Crown Colony of Bechuanaland serves as a frontier line between it and Griqualand.The Capabilities of Bechuanaland.The first view of the country reminded me of East Central Africa, and I looked keenly at it to gauge its capabilities. To a new-comer it would not seem so full of promise as it was to me. It would appear as a waterless region, and too dry for a man accustomed to green fields and flowing rivers, but I have seen nothing between the immediate neighbourhood of the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains to surpass it, and each mile we travelled in Bechuanaland confirmed that impression. Every few miles we crossed dry watercourses; but, though there was no water in sight, it does not derogate from its value as farm land. The plateau of Persia is a naked desert compared to it, and yet Persia possesses eight millions of people, and at one time contained double that number. The prairies of Nebraska, of Colorado, and Kansas are inferior in appearance, and I have seen them in their uninhabited state, but to-day they are remarkable for the growth of their many cities and their magnificent farming estates. All that is wanted to render Bechuanaland a desirable colony is water, so that every farm might draw irrigating supplies from reservoirs along these numerous watercourses. For Nature has so disposed the land that anyone with observant eyes may see with what little trouble water could be converted into rich green pastures and fields bearing weighty grain crops. The track of the railway runs over broad, almost level, valleys, hemmed in by masses of elevated land which have been broken up by ages of torrential rains, and whose soil has been swept by the floods over the valleys, naturally leaving the bases of the mountains higher than the central depression. If a Persian colonist came here he would say: “How admirable for my purpose! I shall begin my draining ditches orcanautsfrom the bases of those hills and train them down towards the lower parts of these valleys, by which time I shall have as many constant and regular running streams as I have ditches, and my flocks and herds and fields shall have abundance of the necessary element.” A thousand of such Persians would create thus a central stream with the surplus water flowing along the valley, and its borders would become one continuous grove. As the Persians would do, the English colonists whose luck it may be to come to this land may also do, and enrich themselves faster than by labouring at gold mining.These dry river-beds, now filled with sand, need only to have stone dams built across, every few hundred yards, to provide any number of reservoirs. They have been formed by rushing torrents which have furrowed the lowlands down to the bed rock, and the depth and breadth of the river courses show us what mighty supplies of water are wasted every year. As the torrents slackened their flow, they deposited their sediment, and finally filtered through underneath until no water was visible, but by digging down about two feet, it is found in liberal quantities, cool and sweet.Even the improvident black has discovered what the greenness of the grass shows, that, though water is not visible, it is not far off. At one station the guards told me that they could find plenty of water by an hour’s digging, which was a marvel to many of our party. I was told in Khama’s territory that Khama, the chief, owned eight hundred thousand head of cattle before the rinderpest made its appearance and reduced his stock by half. If true, and there is no reason to doubt it, it shows what Bechuanaland might become with trifling improvements.Mafeking.Before we came to Vryburg, the continuous valley had broadened out into a prairie, with not a hill in sight. The face of the land was as bare as though ploughed. By 4 p.m. we had come to the 850th mile, showing that the rate during the last twenty-four hours had been sixteen and a third miles an hour. Since Taungs, 731 miles, we had been closely skirting the Transvaal frontier, while to the west of the line lay what was once the mission-field of Livingstone and Moffatt. An hour later we arrived at Mafeking, on the Moloppo River, a tributary of the Orange River. Mafeking will always be celebrated in the future as the place whence Jameson started on his desperate incursion into the Dutch Republic. The Moloppo River contains lengthy pools of water along its deepened course, but the inhabitants of Mafeking are supplied by copious springs from Montsioa’s old farm. The town lies on the north, or right bank, and is 870 miles from Cape Town. It is 4194 feet above the sea. Already it has been laid out in broad streets which are planted with trees, and as these are flourishing they promise to furnish grateful shade in a few years. Outside of the town there is not a tree in sight, scarcely a shrub, and consequently it is more purely a prairie town than any other. Due east of it lies Pretoria, the Boer capital, about 180 miles distant, and it may be when the Boers take broader views of their duty to South Africa at large, and their own interests, that they will permit a railway to be constructed to connect the two towns, in which case the people of Mafeking cannot fail to profit by having exits at Delagoa Bay, Durban, and Cape Town. It will be passing strange also if the neighbourhood of Mafeking will not be found to contain some of the minerals for which the Transvaal is famous. The Malmani Gold Field is about 50 miles off, and the Zeerust Lead and Quicksilver Mine but a trifle further. For the growing of cereals it ought also to be as distinguished as the neighbouring state, for the soil is of the right colour.In Khama’s Country.On leaving Mafeking we were in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, a country of even greater promise than the Crown Colony. The next morning (November 3) we were well into Khama’s country, 1071 miles from Cape Town. A thin forest of acacia trees, about 20 feet in height, covered the face of the land. The soil was richly ochreous in colour. The grass was young and of a tender green, and the air cool and refreshing. The railway constructors must have rejoiced on finding so little labour required to perform their contract in this section. By skilfully chosen curves they were enabled to easily surmount any unevenness on the surface, and nothing more was required than to lay the steel sleepers on the ground, cross them with the rails, and add a few spadefuls of earth to complete the railway. The train runs wonderfully smooth and steady, and we experienced less discomfort than on some English trains I know. This is naturally due in a great measure to the slower and safer rate of speed we travel, and the newness of the rolling stock. During the whole day we were not once reminded by any jolt, jar, or swaying, of any imperfections, and our nights were undisturbed by loose play of rails or jumping.At Three Sisters, 388 miles from Cape Town, we were at the highest altitude of the line, being 4518 feet above the sea. Thence to Bulawayo, a thousand miles, the greatest variation in altitude is 1500 feet; but were it not for the Railway Guide we should never have supposed that the variation was over 100 feet, so imperceptible are the ascents and descents of the line.Magalapye Station (1088 miles) consisted of a third-class carriage and a goods van laid on three lengths of rail. We were halted nearly an hour near the Magalapye River, and learned that we were sixty miles inside of Khama’s country. Improvements are proceeding to make the line more secure during the torrential season. At present it descends into the bed of the broad stream of sand, and here, if anywhere, a smart rainfall would destroy the line. Consequently, a high embankment has been made, stone piers have been built, and an iron bridge will span the river at a sufficient height. Here we heard also that one of the special trains ahead of us had suffered an accident from the explosion of an oil engine, which generated the electric light, resulting in the burning of two men, one of them badly.The Magalapye River is one of those sandy watercourses so common in South Africa. To provide water for the station a broad ditch was cut across the sandy course, which was soon filled with clear and excellent water—enough, in fact to supply a small township. It is to be hoped that all the guests noted this and carried away with them the object lesson.What Water Storage would do.The sight of this suggested to me that there was an opportunity for a genius like Rhodes to do more for South Africa than can be done by the discovery and exploitation of gold fields. A company called the United South African Waterworks might buy land along the principal watercourses, build a series of stone dams across them, clean out the sand between them, and so obtain hundreds of reservoirs for the townships that would certainly be established in their neighbourhood.Beyond Palachwe (1132 miles) the thorn trees begin to disappear, and leafier woods, which resemble dwarf oak, take their place, though there are few trees higher than twenty feet. The soil is good, however, despite the fact that each dry season the fires destroy the grasses and the loams which are necessary for their nourishment. Most of the stations in this part are mere corrugated-iron cottages, or railway carriages, temporarily lent for the housing of the guards.Pauperising the Native.At each halting place since arriving in Bechuanaland, we have been made aware how quickly the Englishman’s generous disposition serves to teach natives to become beggars. Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, have thus suffered great harm. From Taungs to Palachwe, crowds of stalwart and able-bodied natives of both sexes have flocked around the kitchen-car to beg for bread, meat, and kitchen refuse. It is a novel and amusing sight at present, but in the course of time I fancy this practice of patronising beggars will make a callous and offensive breed that will not easily be put off with words.At Shashi River, 5 p.m., the three special trains lay close together, because of the difficult gradient leading out of the bed of the river. While the engines assisted the trains up the steep, I came across an impromptu presentation of an address by the Mayor of Cape Town to Mr Logan, the caterer of the excursion parties. According to what was said, we were all made to believe that we could not have been better served had the first European caterer undertaken the provisioning, to which no one could make objection, and a duly signed testimonial to that effect was presented to that gentleman. The scene, however, seemed odd at unknown Shashi, and strongly illustrated a racial characteristic for speech-making and presentation of testimonials.Nearing Bulawayo.On the morning of November 4 we saw as we looked out of the carriage that the country was a continuation of that of the previous day. It was still as level, apparently, as a billiard table. We were drawing near to Bulawayo—were, in fact, due there about 9 a.m. We had been led to expect a more tropical vegetation, but as yet, though we were only sixty miles off, we saw no signs of it, but rather a return to the thorn bush of the Karroo and Southern Bechuanaland. One variation we noted, the rocky kopje is more frequent. These curious hill-heaps of rock are remnants of the primeval tableland that rose above the present face of the country from 100 to 300 feet. The sight of these curious kopjes deepened the idea that the seat of the “Killer,” Lo Bengula, would be found on a high eminence, protected by a cluster of these kopjes, but we looked long in vain for such a cluster of hills. Even the sight of a lordly tree would be welcomed, for the tame landscape was growing monotonous. The absence of scenery incidents did not diminish our friendly sympathies towards Rhodesia, and we made the most of what was actually visible, the blue sky, the dwarf trees, the low green herbage which dotted the ground in the midst of wide expanses of tawdiness, the burnt grass tussocks, which we knew would in a few days be covered as with a carpet of green. We see the land just before the season changes, and signs of vivifying spring approaching are abundant. A few days ago the first rains set in. The last two nights have witnessed a wonderful exhibition of electric display in the heavens, and severe thunderstorms have followed. In another fortnight it is said the plains will have become like a vast garden.At thirty-five miles from Bulawayo we came to the Matoppo Siding. The engineers stopped for breakfast at a restaurant and boarding house! which was a grass hut 20 feet long. Near by a diminutive zinc hut was called “General Store.” Several tarpaulins sheltered various heaps of miscellanea. There a Matabele servant of a fur trader informed us that Lo Bengula was still alive, near the Zambesi, happy with abundance of mealies and cattle, and that any white man approaching his hiding-place would be surely killed, but that if any large number of white men went near him, he would again fly.At the 1335th mile from Cape Town an accident to the special train ahead of us retarded us four hours. The engine, tender, water tank, and bogie car ran off the track. No one was hurt, fortunately, and by 1 p.m. we were all under way again, though the first lunch we were to have eaten together at Bulawayo was necessarily changed to the first dinner.At 2:30 we were on the alert to catch a first view of Bulawayo, and at 2:55 p.m. a few stray gleams of white, seen through the thorn bush, were pointed out to us as the capital of Matabeleland. We had passed the famous Matoppo Hills to the right of us, but, excepting for their connection with the late war, there was nothing interesting in them. They consist of a series of these rocky kopjes of no great height, lying close together, mere wrecks of the crest of a great land wave, terrible enough when behind each rocky boulder and crevice a rifleman lies hidden, but peaceful now that the war is over, and the white man has made himself an irremovable home in the land.Sir A. Milner at Bulawayo.As was said, we entered Bulawayo a few minutes later, and saw the crude beginnings of a city that must, if all goes well, grow to a great distinction. As a new-comer with but an hour or two’s experience of it, I dare not venture upon saying anything more. We heard that the Governor, Sir A. Milner, had already officiated at the ceremony of opening the line, that his speech was not remarkable for any memorable words, that he had given the Victoria Cross to some trooper for gallant conduct in the field. I heard that Sir Alfred had also read a despatch from Mr Chamberlain, which was to the effect that at the opening of the railway to Bulawayo he was anxious to send a message to the settlers assembled to celebrate the event. He sympathised with their troubles, but he was gratified to think that there was a happier future in store for them. The railway would be a stimulus to every form of enterprise, and would effectually bind the north and south together.In the evening the dinner took place at the Palace Hotel, which is a building that does not deserve such a title, as might be inferred from the haste with which it was constructed. Ten days ago, few believed that it would be in a fit state to receive any guests, but we found it sufficiently advanced to house the 400 who have arrived. Some portions of it, especially the reception room, would be no discredit to the best hotel at the Cape. The accounts of what occurred at the banquet, as described by the local reporters, I do not reproduce here, and refer my reader to the next chapter for what I have gathered of value from personal observation.
This extraordinary town does not disappoint expectations by its progress or present condition. It is in about as advanced a state as it could well be, considering the troubles it has endured. War and cattle-plague have retarded the progressive growth of a town that would have been by this, judging from the spirit of the people, a phenomenon in a century which has seen cities grow like mushrooms. It is cast on broad lines; its streets rival those of Washington for breadth, and its houses occupy as much space as decency requires, for unless they were pulled down and scattered over their respective lots, it is scarcely possible, with due respect to height, that they could occupy more.
Its situation, however, does not approach what I had anticipated to find. From its association with Lo Bengula, the dread Matabele despot on whose single word hung life and death, I had expected to find Bulawayo situate on a commanding eminence, looking down on broad lowlands and far-reaching views that fed the despot’s pride of power; instead of which we found it squatted low on a reddish plain, the ridges of its houses scarcely higher than the thorn bush that surrounds it. There are no hills or eminences anywhere in view, whence a large prospect could be obtained. In fact, the greater part of South Africa appears different to what I had imagined. Probably the partiality of all South African writers for Dutch terms had contributed to give me erroneous impressions. When I read Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid’s descriptions of the West, I fancied I knew what a prairie or plain was, and when, years afterwards, I came in view of them my impressions were only confirmed. But high, low, and bushveld, andKarroo, etc., have been always indefinite terms to me, and so I came to conceive aspects of land which were different to the reality. For a thousand miles we have been travelling over very level or slightly undulating plains, bush-covered over large spaces, the rest being genuine grassy prairie. After a thousand mites, or nearly three days by rail, over a flat country of this description, one naturally thinks that the objective point of such a journey must be of a different character. Most of the guests were on thequi vivefor a pleasing change of scenery until we were within five minutes of Bulawayo station. All at once we caught sight of a few gleams of zinc roofs through the low thorn bush, and a single iron smoke-stack. When we came out of the bush, Bulawayo was spread out before us, squatted on what is undeniably a plain. This plain continues to be of the same character of levelness as far as Salisbury, ay, even as far as the northern edge of Mashonaland; it spreads out to Fort Victoria equally level; and as the land declines to N’gami and the Victoria Falls, it still retains the appearance of plains. Now, the wonder to me is, not that I am 1360 miles north of Cape Town, but that the railway limit should be fixed at Bulawayo, a mere bit of undistinguishable acreage in a flat area which extends to over half a million square miles. Why this place more than any other? There is no river near it, there is no topographic feature to distinguish it. Why not have continued this trunk line on to Salisbury, on to Tete, and the Zambesi? Why not have continued it on to the Victoria Falls?
Considering that we have come all the way from London, 7300 miles away, to celebrate the arrival of the locomotive at Bulawayo, such questions may sound ungrateful, and considering that last night at the banquet every speaker had something favourable to say of the Bechuanaland Railway and its builders, such questions may be supposed to indicate disagreement with the general opinion. There is really no necessity to suppose anything of the kind. Both the builders and the railway deserve praise. The fact that some eight trains have already arrived at Bulawayo, and that every passenger expresses himself warmly as to the condition of the line, and the pleasure derived from the journey, ought to satisfy everyone that the railway is ready for traffic, and will serve for many years, I hope, to connect Bulawayo with Cape Town.
But I want my readers to thoroughly understand what has been done, without prejudice to Bulawayo, the railway, or its builders. I am not so surprised at the railway, as at the length of time people in South Africa were content to be without it. The whole country seems to have been created for railway making. It offers as few difficulties as the London Embankment Hyde Park is extremely uneven as compared with it. For nearly a thousand miles the railway sleepers have been laid at intervals of thirty inches on the natural face of the land; the rails have been laid across these, and connected together; the native navvies have scraped a little soil together, sufficient to cover the steel sleepers; and the iron road was thus ready for traffic. In March, 1896, the railway was but a few miles beyond Mafeking—say, about 880 miles from Cape Town—on November 4, 1897, it is 1360 miles in length from Cape Town, showing a construction of 480 miles in 19 months. There is nothing remarkable in this. The Union Pacific Railway between Omaha and Denver progressed at three, four, even five miles a day, over a much more irregular surface; but then, of course, the navvies were Irishmen, who handled the shovel like experts, and the rails with the precision and skill of master workmen. Natives could not be expected to attain the proficiency and organisation of the American Celts.
Our special train left Cape Town on Sunday at 4 p.m. A corridor train of six coaches, marked Bulawayo, at an ordinary provincial-looking station, seemed somewhat strange. Had it been marked Ujiji, or Yambuya, it could not have been more so. Three of us were put in a compartment for four. The fourth berth was available for hand luggage. Soon after starting we were served with tea and biscuits, and were it not for the flat wilderness scenery we might have imagined ourselves in an International sleeping car. Time tables were also furnished us, from which we learned that we were due at Kimberley, 647 miles, at 10:15 p.m. on the next day, November 1; at Mafeking, 870 miles, at 3:12 p.m. on November 2; Palachwe, in Khama’s country, 1132 miles, at 12:47 p.m., November 3; and at Bulawayo, 1360 miles, at 9:30 a.m. on November 4, which would be ninety hours at fifteen miles per hour.
It took us an hour to cross the Lowry Strait, which at no very distant period must have been covered by sea and separated the Cape Peninsula from the Continent.
At 5:30 we arrived at the Paarl, 35 miles, a beautiful place suggestive of Italy with its vineyards, gardens and shrubbery, and lovingly enfolded by the Drakenstein Range. With its groves of fir and eucalyptus, bright sunshine, and pleasant-faced people, with picturesque mountains round about, it seemed a most desirable place.
The Paarl Station and others we passed bear witness to the excellence of Cape railway administration. The names of the stations were boldly printed on japanned iron plates, and though the passage of so many trains crowded with distinguished strangers had drawn large assemblages of the Colonists, male and female, whites, mulattoes, and negroes, the cleanliness and orderliness that prevailed were very conspicuous.
At 6 p.m. we had passed Wellington, 45 miles, which went to prove the rate of travel. This town also drew from us admiring expressions for its picturesque situation in one of the folds of the Drakenstein, for the early summer green of its groves, vineyards, and fields, and its pretty white houses. I thought, as I marked the charming town and its church spires, and the sweet groves around, what a contrast it was to the time when the Hottentot reared his cattle in the valley, and the predatory bushman infested the neighbourhood, and preyed on ground game and goats.
On the platform, among those who welcomed our coming, were a dozen Radical shoemakers lately arrived from Leicester. They charged Colonel Saunderson, M.P., my fellow traveller, with an expressive message to Mr Labouchere. It is too forcible and inelegant for print, but it admirably illustrates the rapidity with which Radicals become perverted by travel.
Darkness found the train labouring through the mountainous defile of the Hex River. We could see but a loom of the rugged heights on either side, but from all accounts this part of the line is one of the show places which strangers are asked to note.
At daylight we were well on the Karroo, which at first sight was all but a desert. However, we were not long on it before we all took to it kindly. The air was strangely appetising, and we could not help regarding it with benevolence. The engineers who designed the line must have been skilful men, and by the track, as the train curves in and out of narrowing valleys and broadening plains, we are led to suppose that the Continent slopes gently from the interior down to Table Bay. The railway is a surface line, without a single tunnel or any serious cutting. The gradients in some places are stiff, but a single engine finds no difficulty in surmounting them.
At 4 p.m. of November 1 we reached the 458th mile from Cape Town, so that our rate of travel had been nineteen miles the hour. On tolerably level parts our speed, as timed by watch, was thirty miles; stoppages and steep gradients reduce this to nineteen miles.
We were fast asleep by the time we reached Kimberley. Night, and the short pause we made, prevented any correct impressions of the chief city of the Diamond Fields. At half-past six of November 2 we woke up at Taungs, 731 miles. The small stream over which we entered the late Crown Colony of Bechuanaland serves as a frontier line between it and Griqualand.
The first view of the country reminded me of East Central Africa, and I looked keenly at it to gauge its capabilities. To a new-comer it would not seem so full of promise as it was to me. It would appear as a waterless region, and too dry for a man accustomed to green fields and flowing rivers, but I have seen nothing between the immediate neighbourhood of the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains to surpass it, and each mile we travelled in Bechuanaland confirmed that impression. Every few miles we crossed dry watercourses; but, though there was no water in sight, it does not derogate from its value as farm land. The plateau of Persia is a naked desert compared to it, and yet Persia possesses eight millions of people, and at one time contained double that number. The prairies of Nebraska, of Colorado, and Kansas are inferior in appearance, and I have seen them in their uninhabited state, but to-day they are remarkable for the growth of their many cities and their magnificent farming estates. All that is wanted to render Bechuanaland a desirable colony is water, so that every farm might draw irrigating supplies from reservoirs along these numerous watercourses. For Nature has so disposed the land that anyone with observant eyes may see with what little trouble water could be converted into rich green pastures and fields bearing weighty grain crops. The track of the railway runs over broad, almost level, valleys, hemmed in by masses of elevated land which have been broken up by ages of torrential rains, and whose soil has been swept by the floods over the valleys, naturally leaving the bases of the mountains higher than the central depression. If a Persian colonist came here he would say: “How admirable for my purpose! I shall begin my draining ditches orcanautsfrom the bases of those hills and train them down towards the lower parts of these valleys, by which time I shall have as many constant and regular running streams as I have ditches, and my flocks and herds and fields shall have abundance of the necessary element.” A thousand of such Persians would create thus a central stream with the surplus water flowing along the valley, and its borders would become one continuous grove. As the Persians would do, the English colonists whose luck it may be to come to this land may also do, and enrich themselves faster than by labouring at gold mining.
These dry river-beds, now filled with sand, need only to have stone dams built across, every few hundred yards, to provide any number of reservoirs. They have been formed by rushing torrents which have furrowed the lowlands down to the bed rock, and the depth and breadth of the river courses show us what mighty supplies of water are wasted every year. As the torrents slackened their flow, they deposited their sediment, and finally filtered through underneath until no water was visible, but by digging down about two feet, it is found in liberal quantities, cool and sweet.
Even the improvident black has discovered what the greenness of the grass shows, that, though water is not visible, it is not far off. At one station the guards told me that they could find plenty of water by an hour’s digging, which was a marvel to many of our party. I was told in Khama’s territory that Khama, the chief, owned eight hundred thousand head of cattle before the rinderpest made its appearance and reduced his stock by half. If true, and there is no reason to doubt it, it shows what Bechuanaland might become with trifling improvements.
Before we came to Vryburg, the continuous valley had broadened out into a prairie, with not a hill in sight. The face of the land was as bare as though ploughed. By 4 p.m. we had come to the 850th mile, showing that the rate during the last twenty-four hours had been sixteen and a third miles an hour. Since Taungs, 731 miles, we had been closely skirting the Transvaal frontier, while to the west of the line lay what was once the mission-field of Livingstone and Moffatt. An hour later we arrived at Mafeking, on the Moloppo River, a tributary of the Orange River. Mafeking will always be celebrated in the future as the place whence Jameson started on his desperate incursion into the Dutch Republic. The Moloppo River contains lengthy pools of water along its deepened course, but the inhabitants of Mafeking are supplied by copious springs from Montsioa’s old farm. The town lies on the north, or right bank, and is 870 miles from Cape Town. It is 4194 feet above the sea. Already it has been laid out in broad streets which are planted with trees, and as these are flourishing they promise to furnish grateful shade in a few years. Outside of the town there is not a tree in sight, scarcely a shrub, and consequently it is more purely a prairie town than any other. Due east of it lies Pretoria, the Boer capital, about 180 miles distant, and it may be when the Boers take broader views of their duty to South Africa at large, and their own interests, that they will permit a railway to be constructed to connect the two towns, in which case the people of Mafeking cannot fail to profit by having exits at Delagoa Bay, Durban, and Cape Town. It will be passing strange also if the neighbourhood of Mafeking will not be found to contain some of the minerals for which the Transvaal is famous. The Malmani Gold Field is about 50 miles off, and the Zeerust Lead and Quicksilver Mine but a trifle further. For the growing of cereals it ought also to be as distinguished as the neighbouring state, for the soil is of the right colour.
On leaving Mafeking we were in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, a country of even greater promise than the Crown Colony. The next morning (November 3) we were well into Khama’s country, 1071 miles from Cape Town. A thin forest of acacia trees, about 20 feet in height, covered the face of the land. The soil was richly ochreous in colour. The grass was young and of a tender green, and the air cool and refreshing. The railway constructors must have rejoiced on finding so little labour required to perform their contract in this section. By skilfully chosen curves they were enabled to easily surmount any unevenness on the surface, and nothing more was required than to lay the steel sleepers on the ground, cross them with the rails, and add a few spadefuls of earth to complete the railway. The train runs wonderfully smooth and steady, and we experienced less discomfort than on some English trains I know. This is naturally due in a great measure to the slower and safer rate of speed we travel, and the newness of the rolling stock. During the whole day we were not once reminded by any jolt, jar, or swaying, of any imperfections, and our nights were undisturbed by loose play of rails or jumping.
At Three Sisters, 388 miles from Cape Town, we were at the highest altitude of the line, being 4518 feet above the sea. Thence to Bulawayo, a thousand miles, the greatest variation in altitude is 1500 feet; but were it not for the Railway Guide we should never have supposed that the variation was over 100 feet, so imperceptible are the ascents and descents of the line.
Magalapye Station (1088 miles) consisted of a third-class carriage and a goods van laid on three lengths of rail. We were halted nearly an hour near the Magalapye River, and learned that we were sixty miles inside of Khama’s country. Improvements are proceeding to make the line more secure during the torrential season. At present it descends into the bed of the broad stream of sand, and here, if anywhere, a smart rainfall would destroy the line. Consequently, a high embankment has been made, stone piers have been built, and an iron bridge will span the river at a sufficient height. Here we heard also that one of the special trains ahead of us had suffered an accident from the explosion of an oil engine, which generated the electric light, resulting in the burning of two men, one of them badly.
The Magalapye River is one of those sandy watercourses so common in South Africa. To provide water for the station a broad ditch was cut across the sandy course, which was soon filled with clear and excellent water—enough, in fact to supply a small township. It is to be hoped that all the guests noted this and carried away with them the object lesson.
The sight of this suggested to me that there was an opportunity for a genius like Rhodes to do more for South Africa than can be done by the discovery and exploitation of gold fields. A company called the United South African Waterworks might buy land along the principal watercourses, build a series of stone dams across them, clean out the sand between them, and so obtain hundreds of reservoirs for the townships that would certainly be established in their neighbourhood.
Beyond Palachwe (1132 miles) the thorn trees begin to disappear, and leafier woods, which resemble dwarf oak, take their place, though there are few trees higher than twenty feet. The soil is good, however, despite the fact that each dry season the fires destroy the grasses and the loams which are necessary for their nourishment. Most of the stations in this part are mere corrugated-iron cottages, or railway carriages, temporarily lent for the housing of the guards.
At each halting place since arriving in Bechuanaland, we have been made aware how quickly the Englishman’s generous disposition serves to teach natives to become beggars. Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, have thus suffered great harm. From Taungs to Palachwe, crowds of stalwart and able-bodied natives of both sexes have flocked around the kitchen-car to beg for bread, meat, and kitchen refuse. It is a novel and amusing sight at present, but in the course of time I fancy this practice of patronising beggars will make a callous and offensive breed that will not easily be put off with words.
At Shashi River, 5 p.m., the three special trains lay close together, because of the difficult gradient leading out of the bed of the river. While the engines assisted the trains up the steep, I came across an impromptu presentation of an address by the Mayor of Cape Town to Mr Logan, the caterer of the excursion parties. According to what was said, we were all made to believe that we could not have been better served had the first European caterer undertaken the provisioning, to which no one could make objection, and a duly signed testimonial to that effect was presented to that gentleman. The scene, however, seemed odd at unknown Shashi, and strongly illustrated a racial characteristic for speech-making and presentation of testimonials.
On the morning of November 4 we saw as we looked out of the carriage that the country was a continuation of that of the previous day. It was still as level, apparently, as a billiard table. We were drawing near to Bulawayo—were, in fact, due there about 9 a.m. We had been led to expect a more tropical vegetation, but as yet, though we were only sixty miles off, we saw no signs of it, but rather a return to the thorn bush of the Karroo and Southern Bechuanaland. One variation we noted, the rocky kopje is more frequent. These curious hill-heaps of rock are remnants of the primeval tableland that rose above the present face of the country from 100 to 300 feet. The sight of these curious kopjes deepened the idea that the seat of the “Killer,” Lo Bengula, would be found on a high eminence, protected by a cluster of these kopjes, but we looked long in vain for such a cluster of hills. Even the sight of a lordly tree would be welcomed, for the tame landscape was growing monotonous. The absence of scenery incidents did not diminish our friendly sympathies towards Rhodesia, and we made the most of what was actually visible, the blue sky, the dwarf trees, the low green herbage which dotted the ground in the midst of wide expanses of tawdiness, the burnt grass tussocks, which we knew would in a few days be covered as with a carpet of green. We see the land just before the season changes, and signs of vivifying spring approaching are abundant. A few days ago the first rains set in. The last two nights have witnessed a wonderful exhibition of electric display in the heavens, and severe thunderstorms have followed. In another fortnight it is said the plains will have become like a vast garden.
At thirty-five miles from Bulawayo we came to the Matoppo Siding. The engineers stopped for breakfast at a restaurant and boarding house! which was a grass hut 20 feet long. Near by a diminutive zinc hut was called “General Store.” Several tarpaulins sheltered various heaps of miscellanea. There a Matabele servant of a fur trader informed us that Lo Bengula was still alive, near the Zambesi, happy with abundance of mealies and cattle, and that any white man approaching his hiding-place would be surely killed, but that if any large number of white men went near him, he would again fly.
At the 1335th mile from Cape Town an accident to the special train ahead of us retarded us four hours. The engine, tender, water tank, and bogie car ran off the track. No one was hurt, fortunately, and by 1 p.m. we were all under way again, though the first lunch we were to have eaten together at Bulawayo was necessarily changed to the first dinner.
At 2:30 we were on the alert to catch a first view of Bulawayo, and at 2:55 p.m. a few stray gleams of white, seen through the thorn bush, were pointed out to us as the capital of Matabeleland. We had passed the famous Matoppo Hills to the right of us, but, excepting for their connection with the late war, there was nothing interesting in them. They consist of a series of these rocky kopjes of no great height, lying close together, mere wrecks of the crest of a great land wave, terrible enough when behind each rocky boulder and crevice a rifleman lies hidden, but peaceful now that the war is over, and the white man has made himself an irremovable home in the land.
As was said, we entered Bulawayo a few minutes later, and saw the crude beginnings of a city that must, if all goes well, grow to a great distinction. As a new-comer with but an hour or two’s experience of it, I dare not venture upon saying anything more. We heard that the Governor, Sir A. Milner, had already officiated at the ceremony of opening the line, that his speech was not remarkable for any memorable words, that he had given the Victoria Cross to some trooper for gallant conduct in the field. I heard that Sir Alfred had also read a despatch from Mr Chamberlain, which was to the effect that at the opening of the railway to Bulawayo he was anxious to send a message to the settlers assembled to celebrate the event. He sympathised with their troubles, but he was gratified to think that there was a happier future in store for them. The railway would be a stimulus to every form of enterprise, and would effectually bind the north and south together.
In the evening the dinner took place at the Palace Hotel, which is a building that does not deserve such a title, as might be inferred from the haste with which it was constructed. Ten days ago, few believed that it would be in a fit state to receive any guests, but we found it sufficiently advanced to house the 400 who have arrived. Some portions of it, especially the reception room, would be no discredit to the best hotel at the Cape. The accounts of what occurred at the banquet, as described by the local reporters, I do not reproduce here, and refer my reader to the next chapter for what I have gathered of value from personal observation.
Chapter Two.Bulawayo, November 10, 1897.“Rhodesia has a Great Agricultural Future before It.”The exploration and the development of Rhodesia have always been regarded by me with sentimental interest. Every new advance in this region has been hailed by me with infinite satisfaction, and no man regretted more than myself the lapses of the Founder and Administrator in December, 1895, which threatened to involve the whole of South Africa in trouble, and to arrest the progress which had begun. It appeared for a moment as if Rhodes and Jameson had relinquished golden substance for a shadow. It is not in human capacity to realise from a far distance the truth of the rumours which came from here respecting the intrinsic value of the land, and so I came here at a great inconvenience to myself to verify by actual observation what had been repeatedly stated. I have been rewarded for so doing by clear convictions, which, though they may be of no great value to others, are very satisfactory to myself, and will for ever remain fixed in my mind, despite all contrary assertions. There was a little speech delivered by Commandant Van Rensburg on Monday night, which, perhaps, will be thought by London editors of no importance, but it was most gratifying to me, inasmuch as I had become possessed with the same ideas. He said that it was generally supposed that without gold Rhodesia could not exist, but he differed from that view, as, he was certain in his own mind, it would remain an important country because of its many agricultural products, its native wood, coal, cement, etc., etc. He had come to the conclusion that Rhodesia was as fit for agriculture as any part of South Africa, though he had been rather doubtful of it before he had seen the land with his own eyes. That is precisely my view. It is natural that the large majority of visitors who have come here to satisfy themselves about the existence of gold in Rhodesia should pay but little attention to what may be seen on the surface; but those who have done so now know that Rhodesia has a great agricultural future before it.The Opening of the Bulawayo Railway.“Few Events of the Century Surpass it in Interest and Importance.”Several hundreds of men, eminent in divers professions, have come from England, America, the Cape, Orange Free State, Natal, Basuto and Zulu Lands, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, and Northern Rhodesia, to celebrate the railway achievement by which this young Colony has become connected with the oldest Colony in South Africa. In any other continent the opening of five hundred miles of new railway would be fittingly celebrated by the usual banquet and the after-dinner felicitations of those directly concerned with it; but in this instance there are six members of the Imperial Parliament, the High Commissioner of the Cape, the Governor of Natal, scores of members of the Colonial Legislatures, and scores of notabilities, leaders of thought and action, bankers, merchants, and clergy from every colony and state in the southern part of this continent. They all felt it to be a great event. Few events of the century surpass it in interest and importance. It marks the conclusion of an audacious enterprise, which less than ten years ago would have been deemed impossible, and only two years ago as most unlikely. It furnishes a lesson to all colonising nations. It teaches methods of operation never practised before. It suggests large and grand possibilities, completely reforms and alters our judgment with regard to Africa, effaces difficulties that impeded right views, and infuses a belief that, once the political and capitalist public realises what the occasion really signifies, this railway is but the precursor of many more in this continent. In fact, we have been publicly told that we are to expect others, and that the railway to the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi is the next on the programme.An Embryo State “Fairly Started into Existence.”The Rudd-Rhodes Concession was granted by Lo Bengula in 1888. The Charter to the South Africa Company was given in 1889; possession of Mashonaland was taken by Jameson and his pioneers on September 12th, 1890; Bulawayo was entered in 1893, and thus the Lo Bengula Concession grew to be Rhodesia. Only four years ago! But during this brief interval the advance has been so rapid that, though at home people may vaguely believe in it, one has to see the town of Bulawayo and to come in personal contact with its people to fully comprehend what has been done, and to rightly understand the situation. With the clearer view gained by a personal visit the huge map in the Stock Exchange, which shows the estates, farms, townships, and mines of Rhodesia, becomes an encyclopaedia of information—the plans of Bulawayo and Salisbury, and other towns which have arisen in Rhodesia, valuable directories. If fresh from an inspection and study of these you step out and look at the town of Bulawayo, and glance at the country, you begin to share the local knowledge of the inhabitants, see with their eyes, understand on what they base their hopes, and grasp the real meaning of pushing a railway 500 miles to reach a town of 3000 people. So that, while at home men were arguing that the Rudd-Rhodes Concession was valueless, and Rhodesia a fraud, the land was being avidly bought, prospectors had discovered gold reefs, shafts had been sunk, tunnels had been made to get a fair idea of the value of the reefs, a nominal capital of many millions—some say twenty millions, some say double that sum—had been assured for operations, towns had been created with all the comforts suited to new colonists, and the embryo State was fairly started into existence.“Enormous Possibilities in View.”While being instructed in the hopes and ambitions of several of the local people, my knowledge of how other young countries, such as the States, Canada, Australia, had been affected by the extension of the railway into parts as thinly inhabited as Rhodesia, induced me to cast my glance far beyond Rhodesia, that I might see what was likely to be its destiny, whether it was to be a Free State like Orange, self-sufficient and complacent within its own limits, or broadly ambitious like Illinois State, of which Chicago is the heart. Assuming that the energy which has already astonished us be continued, there are enormous possibilities in view. Bulawayo is 1360 miles from Cape Town, but it is only 1300 miles of land travel from Cairo, for the rest of the distance may be made over deep lakes and navigable rivers; it is but 1300 miles to Mossamedes, in Angola, which would bring the town within fifteen days from London; it is only 450 miles from Beira, on the East Coast, which would give it another port of entry open to commerce from the Suez Canal, India, Australia, and New Zealand; it is but 350 miles from N’gami; it must tap British Central Africa and the southern parts of the Congo State.That is the position acquired by Bulawayo by the railway from Cape Town. Chicago, less than 60 years ago, had far less pretensions than this town, and yet it has now a million and a half of people.Something of what Chicago has become Bulawayo may aspire to. The vast coal fields to which the new railway is to run, the stone, granite, sandstone, trachyte, the woods, minerals, gold, copper, lead, and iron, the enormous agricultural area, are valuable assets which must nourish it to an equal destiny. Then the Victoria Falls, larger than Niagara, what mighty electrical power lies stored there! I merely mention these things hap-hazard with the view of assisting my readers to understand the significance of these festivities. Many men will think and meditate on them, and new confidence, courage, and energy will be begotten to stimulate them to greater designs and larger effort.The Founding of Rhodesia will cause a Re-Shaping of Policies.But how does the scene at Bulawayo affect the political world? It seems to me to have great importance for all South African and British politicians for the way it affects Germany, Portugal, the Congo Free State, and Cape Colony. It will cause people to revise their opinions, and to clear their minds of all previous policies. Any influence that Germany may have hoped to exercise on South African politics has received a check by the insuperable barrier that has been created by those slender lines of steel between its South-West African Colony and the Dutch Republics. The Bechuana Crown Colony and Protectorate, through which they run, must receive a percentage of all immigrants to Rhodesia. These last two are far in advance of the German Colony, and each day must see them strengthened, so that they will become formidable obstacles in the way of German aspirations. These colonies lying along the length of the western frontier of the Transvaal State are four times larger than the Transvaal, and their grand stock-raising areas and agricultural plains having now become easily accessible, cannot remain long unoccupied. I fancy, therefore, that the ambition of Germany to rival our claims to the paramountcy will become wholly extinguished now, and that her thinkers, like wise men, will prepare their minds for the new problems which must be met in a not remote future.The Lesson for Portugal.The populating of Rhodesia by mixed races of whites of a superior order to any near it must exercise the Portuguese, whose territory lies between Rhodesia and the Indian Ocean. The iron road leading to it cannot be closed. The future of the country is no longer doubtful. We have tested its climate ourselves; we have heard the general conviction that these lofty plains, 4500 feet above the sea, suit the constitution of the white race; we have seen a hundred English children going from Bulawayo to a picnic to celebrate the arrival of the railway, and assuredly that would have been impossible on a tropical day in any other tropical country I know of. We have seen scores of infants on the streets, in the suburbs, on the plains outside, in arms, and in perambulators, and they all looked thriving, pink, and happy. The market of Bulawayo each day shows us English vegetables fresh from the garden. We have seen specimens of the cereals. Well, then, it appears to me certain that there will be a masterful population in this country before long, which it would be the height of unwisdom to vex overmuch with obsolete ordinances and bye-laws such as obtain in Portuguese Africa, and burdensome taxes and rates on the traffic that must arise as this country grows in wealth and population. It may be hoped that intelligent Portuguese will do all in their power to promote concord and good feeling with their neighbour, to check refractory chiefs from doing anything to disturb the peace, for nothing could make the people of Rhodesia more restless than interruption to traffic, and a sense of insecurity. If they do that the Portuguese territory must become enriched by the neighbourhood of Rhodesia.Lessons to Northern Neighbours.The Congo State will doubtless recognise its profit by the advent of the railway to Bulawayo and the extension of the line towards its southern borders, and the arrangements of the Government will be such as to ensure respect for boundaries and to teach the native tribes that transgression of such will be dangerous.The British Government have a valuable object lesson for the development of African colonies. For over two hundred years the West African colonies have been stagnating for lack of such means of communication. They have been unable to utilise their resources. Their natural pretensions to the hinterlands have been grievously curtailed, and what ought to have been British is now French. Nyasaland has also too long suffered from Imperial parsimony. The function of government should comprise something more than police duty or the collection of taxes. The removal of causes injurious to health and life, and the establishment of communication as required by circumstances of climate, and needful to augment commerce, are just as urgent as the prevention of lawlessness and the collection of imposts. The climate of Nyasaland has slain more valuable men than the assegais of the Angoni. Against the latter the Government sent their Sikhs; against the former they have done nothing. Many of the sick colonists might have been saved, if, when weakened by anaemia, a little railway past the Shire Rapids had taken them quickly through the malarious land. If it be worth while to retain and administer Nyasaland, it is surely worth while to supply the population with certain means to send the fruits of their industry to the world’s markets, and to enable them to receive the necessaries of existence without endangering their lives in the effort or risking the loss of their goods. Therefore, to a Government that has shown such dread of constructing an insignificant railway a hundred miles in length, the enterprise of the Chartered Company in constructing one five hundred miles long—and starting immediately upon an extension two hundred and twenty miles—at the cost of one and three-quarter millions, must be exceedingly stimulative. The antique and barbarous method of porterage should be abolished in every British colony, more especially in tropical colonies, where exposure to sun and rain means death to white and black.How an Enlightened Transvaal should view the Spread of Free Institutions in the North.To the South African Republic it is vitally important to weigh well in what manner the Bulawayo railway will affect her future. The Republic will soon be surrounded by a rampart of steel on three sides and alien land and ocean on the other. From Beira, north of the Republic, a railway will run west to Salisbury, and thence south to Bulawayo and the Cape. With two ways of ingress from the sea a country like Rhodesia—with as good a climate as the Transvaal State, with resources which tend to rapid prosperity, enjoying impartial and liberal laws, just and pure administration, opening its arms widely to the whole world without regard to race, blessed with ample domains and suited to the needs of all classes—must necessarily prove more attractive to all people in search of homes, than a country which only favours Dutch burghers; and Rhodesia therefore bids fair in a few years to overtake the Republic in population, and even to surpass it. The Boers do not avail themselves of the advantages of their position to that fulness which would make it doubtful whether Rhodesia or the Transvaal offered the most inducements to intending settlers. On the contrary, the common report is that the object of the Boers is to restrict population and reserve the State for Boer progeny. I shall see the country for myself, I hope, and either verify or disprove it. But if true, the attempt to suppress population and growth by restrictions, monopolies, and vexatious ordinances is simple imbecility, as compared to the Chartered Company’s policy of stimulating commerce by giving free rein to enterprise, and keeping the paths and gates to its territory freely open to all comers. If there is an intelligent man in the Transvaal, it must be clear to him that the Republic must soon lose the rank among South African States to which she was entitled by her wonderful resources and undoubted advantages; and the only thing that can save her from degradation, neglect, and financial difficulties, is the absorption of that alien population which crowds her cities and clamours for political rights.The Cape and German Pushfulness.Cape Colony, though much is due to it for its support of the Bechuana railway, is not wholly free from the blame of inertness in the past. One cannot look at the map of Africa and miss seeing that extraordinary territory labelled German close to Cape Colony, without being reminded of the obtuseness shown by the Cape democracy. But the Germans are a great nation, rich, commerce-loving, and enterprising, and the Cape people need to be warned, considering that they are largely mixed up with Dutch Boers who are slow to move and sadly behind the times. If the Germans chose to invest 4,000,000 pounds in railways from the mouth of the Swakop to the banks of the Orange, they would be formidable competitors for the trade of Bechuanaland and the north of the colony, and Swakop is three days nearer Europe than Table Bay. The railways in America created cities and filled the wastes with settlers, and every new settler was supposed to be worth 200 pounds to the nation; and in that country they have a mile of railway to every twenty square miles of country.The Cape has but a mile of railway to every 112 square miles. The railways should spread out like a fan from Cape Town. The existing lines require straightening greatly. It is not good policy that the line to Natal should run through alien States, nor is it conducive to the development of the Colony. Some railways may not show large dividends, but they are indispensable to development and communication: they give value to acres which otherwise would be worthless, and indirectly contribute to revenue in other ways than by dividends. Hence Cape Colony may learn a good deal from this new railway.Bulawayo reminds Mr Stanley of Winnipeg.I think I have said enough to illustrate the position in which Bulawayo has been placed by the arrival of the railway. At present its broad avenues and streets give one an idea that it has made too much of itself. When the avenues are about 90 feet wide and the streets 130 feet wide, naturally the corrugated-iron one-storeyed cottages and the one-storeyed brick buildings appear very diminutive; and the truth is that, were the streets of proportionate width to the height of the buildings, the town would appear very small. The plain upon which it stands gives an idea of infinity that renders poor one-storeyed Bulawayo very finite-looking indeed. The town, however, has laid itself out for future greatness, and the designers of it have been wise. Winnipeg, in Manitoba, which Bulawayo reminds me of by the surrounding plain, was laid out on just such a spacious plan; but ten years later six-storeyed buildings usurped the place of the isolated iron hut and cottage, and the streets were seen to be no whit too wide. Ten years hence Bulawayo will aspire higher towards the sky, and when the electric trams run in double lines between rows of shade trees, there will be no sense of disproportion between buildings and streets. On the walls of the Stock Exchange I found hanging plans and elevations of the brick and stone buildings already contracted for. They are not to be very lofty, none over two storeys, but architecturally they are most attractive. These new buildings will, perhaps, stand for about five years, for, according to my experience, it is not until the tenth year that the double storey becomes the fashion. At the twentieth year begins the triple storey; at thirty years the fourth storey begins to appear.East of the town area devoted to commerce is a broad strip of park. It occupies a gentle hollow in the plain, watered by a crooked ditch, called spruit here, running through a rich, dark, and very thirsty earth. It contains a few puddles here and there along its course. Only a portion of the park is laid out as yet, and that has been well and carefully done. Its plots contain a few hundreds of grape vines, which look like currant bushes. There are also about a hundred very young orange trees, a few flowers, shrubs, etc. A stone column to the memory of Captain Lendy occupies an eminence in it. The whole park has a sombre appearance, owing to the dark soil and ironstone freely sprinkling it. But as the bushes, shrubs, and flowers have only been lately planted, and as around the forcing houses there is a large number of young plants in tins and pots, soon to be transplanted, a couple of years will make an immense difference in the appearance of the pleasaunce.Beyond and east of the park is the residential part of Bulawayo, divided into two avenues and nine streets running east and west, and eight roads running north and south, named respectively Townsend, Lawley, Livingstone, Pauling, Clark, Duncan, and Heyman, and Park Road, parallel with the park.Prices of Property and Stands in Bulawayo.Messrs Adcock and Norton have furnished me with the prices of stands, or town lots, obtained by them during the last six months. The most noteworthy are Lot 708, with large wood and iron house, 1900 pounds; Lot 234, southern half only, bought by Curtis and Co., outfitters, Johannesburg, 3500 pounds; Lot 239, half only, bought by Gowie and Co., seedsmen, of Grahamstown, 2000 pounds; Lots 451-452 bought by a London firm, 3000 pounds; Lot 333, bought by Stuart Campbell and Co., merchants, Johannesburg, 2000 pounds; eastern half of Lot 133, 70 feet frontage, on 8th Avenue, purchased by Hepworths, manufacturers, Leeds, England, and South Africa, 5000 pounds; Lot 346, corner portion, bought by Knight and Co., boot and shoe makers, Grahamstown, 3600 pounds.Hotel Life at Bulawayo.From various people I have learned that the average estimate of the population is 3000 whites, one-fifth of whom are women and children. There are several hotels, the best of which are the Palace, Maxim, and Charter; but none of them are fit for ladies, and scarcely for gentlemen. The noise and clatter at these forbid sleep, except between midnight and 5 a.m. The food is somewhat coarse, but plentiful; the tea and coffee such as one may obtain on a Cape liner—that is, too strong an infusion of one, and a watery decoction of the other. The cooks evidently are common ship-cooks, as one may gather by the way they boil potatoes and cabbages. The bread is good, the butter is tolerable, the meat is like leather. The waiters, though civil and willing enough, are awkward and new to their work. Board and lodging may be obtained for from 14 to 18 pounds per month, two beds in a room 12 feet by 12 feet. At the cheaper boarding-houses it will cost between 4 and 10 pounds. The rent of lodgings in a small room amounts to 15 shillings per week.Prices of Living and Wages at Bulawayo.Prices are likely to be much lower shortly. At present tea is 3 shillings per pound, coffee 2 shillings 6 pence, rice 10 pence per pound, fresh meat 1 shilling 6 pence, corned beef 3 shillings per tin of 2 pounds, flour 6 pence per pound, soap per bar 1 shilling 6 pence, fresh butter 7 shillings to 8 shillings per pound, sugar 1 shilling, matches 1 penny per box, eggs 15 shillings to 18 shillings per dozen, candles 3 pence each, fowls 5 shillings each, potatoes 160 pounds for 4 pounds; vegetables dear.Wages are high, as might be supposed. Masons and bricklayers obtain 30 shillings per day, tailors 35 shillings per day, carpenters 25 shillings to 30 shillings per day, compositors 9 pounds per week, plumbers and painters 9 pounds per week, waiters, 12 to 15 pounds per month, clerks, first-class, 35 pounds per month, ordinary clerks, 15 to 25 pounds per month, white labourers, 5 shillings per day, black labourers from 1 shilling 3 pence to 2 shillings per day. The Government lately gave eighty white labourers work on the park at 5 shillings per day to keep them from starvation.Bulawayo’s Buildings and Institutions.The finest buildings of Bulawayo are, first, the long, low building occupied by the Stock Exchange, Telegraph, and Post Office, the Bulawayo Club building, which is extremely comfortable, Sauer’s Chambers, and the Palace Hotel, the latter being incomplete; when finished commercial travellers will, no doubt, find it comfortable, and it may be suitable for ladies.There are two daily papers, theBulawayo ChronicleandMatabele Times, sold at 3 pence per copy. I have also seen theRhodesia Review, which is, I believe, a weekly issue. There are seven churches—the Wesleyan, Congregational, Church of England, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic, and one Temperance Hall. There is, of course, a gaol, a fire brigade, and police station. In the gaol are several prisoners, white and black. The crimes of the whites have been burglary, theft, and drunkenness. Among the blacks are fourteen prisoners under sentence of death.The railway station is fairly adapted for its purpose, though its construction was, necessarily, rapid. The settling reservoirs, fed by pipes from the dams, are not| far from it; but I fear that they will be of little use, as the soil is too porous. A coating of cement would make them effective, but the general opinion is that cement would be too costly.Bulawayo’s Great Defect.—Better Water Supply Imperative.The great defect of Bulawayo is the smallness of the water supply and the badness of it. At present the inhabitants depend on wells, and water is easily obtainable at 30 and 40 feet, but the water is of a hard and indifferent quality. Up on the Maatschesmuslopje stream, about two and a half miles from the town, there have been constructed three dams of different lengths and varying heights. Number 1 dam is the nearest to Bulawayo, and has a solid stone and cement core starting from the bedrock 10 feet wide, and decreasing by set-backs of 6 inches to a width of 2 feet at the top. Number 2 dam has a puddled core of clay faced with stone, and Number 3 is of similar construction. In April last these dams were full and overflowing, but unfortunately, through bad construction and want of care, there were several leaks, and it is now decided to demolish two of the dams and rebuild them. Numbers 2 and 3 are quite fit to retain the water catchment, and Number 1 will be finished by the end of the year. The estimated storage of water by the three dams is calculated to be between 40 and 45 million gallons. A fourth dam, about to be erected, will, it is thought, considerably increase the storage.Several critics are of the opinion that the dams will not retain any water, though they were full last April.We have had four copious showers of rain since our arrival on the 4th inst, but a few hours later the spruits, gullies, and watercourses were almost waterless, the streets showing scarcely a trace of the rain, so porous and thirsty is the soil. Daily it becomes apparent to me that the inhabitants of Bulawayo should lose no time in studying the art of water conservation. In a country just within the tropics an abundant supply of water is essential, and thirty gallons per head per day would not be excessive. Ten thousand inhabitants should be able to command 300,000 gallons daily, but Bulawayo within twenty years will have probably 20,000, and there is no river between here and Khama’s country that could supply 600,000 gallons daily. Numbers of little watersheds may be drained into reservoirs, but if I were a citizen of Bulawayo my anxiety would be mainly on the subject of water. The water question is not at all an insoluble one, because, for the matter of that, Bulawayo will have always the Zambesi tributaries to fall back upon, especially the Guay River.Lo Ben’s Kraal.At the north end of the town we come to a gate leading to an avenue which ran perfectly straight for two miles and a half. The carriage road, which it is intended to macadamise, is about 30 feet wide, and running parallel with it on either side is an enclosure 50 feet wide, to be planted with shade trees. Thus the avenue embraces a width of about 130 feet. At the extremity of it is the Government House, standing in grounds which four years ago were occupied by Lo Bengula’s kraal. We were all curious to see the place, and one of the first objects shown to us was the small tree under which the Matabele king dispensed his bloody judgments.Here is a description of the place from “Zambesia”: “The King’s capital stands upon a ridge on the northern side of the Bulawayo River, in a most commanding position, overlooking as it does the entire country round. Every yard of the ground was covered with dung, layer after layer; the whole place was filthily dirty. The King used to sit on a block of wood in the middle of a great pole stockade, surrounded by sheep and goats.”The first sentence is most misleading, though not inaccurate. The kraal stood upon the same level as the plain of New Bulawayo, but the “Bulawayo River”—a dry watercourse most of the year—has scoured out a broad hollow to a depth of about 20 feet in the plain, and, as the kraal was seated on the brow above it, it enables one to have a view of a circle of about fifteen miles in diameter, within which are probably three or four of these long, broad swells of plain land.Government House is a long, low, white-washed house, in Dutch Colonial style, with a pillared verandah outside. It is the property of Mr Rhodes, as well as the avenue just mentioned. I am told he possesses about eighty square miles altogether hereabouts, and, by the way he is developing his estates, it will some day be a beautiful as well as valuable property.From Cape Town to Bulawayo Mr Rhodes Spoken of “With Unqualified Admiration.”This reminds me that I have not once mentioned Rhodes, though when describing Rhodesia one ought not to omit his name; but the fact is he has preferred to remain in the veld rather than undergo the fatigue of the banquets and ceremonies. From Cape Town here many men have spoken of him to me, and always with unqualified admiration. I know no man who occupies such a place in men’s thoughts. His absence has given rise to all kinds of conjectures as to the cause of it. Some say it is due to the fact that the Cape elections are approaching, and he did not wish to be forced to a pronouncement of policy; others that it is due to Dr Jameson’s zealous care of his health, as he suffers from heart complaint; others again say it is due to a wounded spirit, which too long grieving might easily end in a Timonian moroseness. Whatever the true cause may be, he has so planted himself in the affections of the people that no eccentricity of his can detract from his merits. When a man scatters 200,000 a year on the country out of which he made his wealth, it covers a multitude of sins in the minds of the recipients of his gratuitous favours.“He does mad and fantastic executionEngaging and redeeming of himself,With such a careless face and forceless care,As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,Bade him win all.”The festivities of the celebration end to-night, or rather to-morrow morning at 1 a.m., and then Bulawayo will be left to itself to begin its own proper work of development. We have seen what Bulawayo is as it terminated the employment of the ox-wagon, and had just emerged out of the sore troubles caused by war, famine, and rinderpest. The next train that arrives after our departure will be the beginning of a new era. The machinery that litters the road will be brought up, and the ox-wagons drawn by fourteen oxen, and the wagons drawn by twelve mules, and those drawn by twenty donkeys, will haul it to the mines, and hence we may hope at the end of a year or so that Rhodesia will have proved by its gold output its intrinsic value as a gold held. In my next letter I mean to touch upon this subject.
The exploration and the development of Rhodesia have always been regarded by me with sentimental interest. Every new advance in this region has been hailed by me with infinite satisfaction, and no man regretted more than myself the lapses of the Founder and Administrator in December, 1895, which threatened to involve the whole of South Africa in trouble, and to arrest the progress which had begun. It appeared for a moment as if Rhodes and Jameson had relinquished golden substance for a shadow. It is not in human capacity to realise from a far distance the truth of the rumours which came from here respecting the intrinsic value of the land, and so I came here at a great inconvenience to myself to verify by actual observation what had been repeatedly stated. I have been rewarded for so doing by clear convictions, which, though they may be of no great value to others, are very satisfactory to myself, and will for ever remain fixed in my mind, despite all contrary assertions. There was a little speech delivered by Commandant Van Rensburg on Monday night, which, perhaps, will be thought by London editors of no importance, but it was most gratifying to me, inasmuch as I had become possessed with the same ideas. He said that it was generally supposed that without gold Rhodesia could not exist, but he differed from that view, as, he was certain in his own mind, it would remain an important country because of its many agricultural products, its native wood, coal, cement, etc., etc. He had come to the conclusion that Rhodesia was as fit for agriculture as any part of South Africa, though he had been rather doubtful of it before he had seen the land with his own eyes. That is precisely my view. It is natural that the large majority of visitors who have come here to satisfy themselves about the existence of gold in Rhodesia should pay but little attention to what may be seen on the surface; but those who have done so now know that Rhodesia has a great agricultural future before it.
Several hundreds of men, eminent in divers professions, have come from England, America, the Cape, Orange Free State, Natal, Basuto and Zulu Lands, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, and Northern Rhodesia, to celebrate the railway achievement by which this young Colony has become connected with the oldest Colony in South Africa. In any other continent the opening of five hundred miles of new railway would be fittingly celebrated by the usual banquet and the after-dinner felicitations of those directly concerned with it; but in this instance there are six members of the Imperial Parliament, the High Commissioner of the Cape, the Governor of Natal, scores of members of the Colonial Legislatures, and scores of notabilities, leaders of thought and action, bankers, merchants, and clergy from every colony and state in the southern part of this continent. They all felt it to be a great event. Few events of the century surpass it in interest and importance. It marks the conclusion of an audacious enterprise, which less than ten years ago would have been deemed impossible, and only two years ago as most unlikely. It furnishes a lesson to all colonising nations. It teaches methods of operation never practised before. It suggests large and grand possibilities, completely reforms and alters our judgment with regard to Africa, effaces difficulties that impeded right views, and infuses a belief that, once the political and capitalist public realises what the occasion really signifies, this railway is but the precursor of many more in this continent. In fact, we have been publicly told that we are to expect others, and that the railway to the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi is the next on the programme.
The Rudd-Rhodes Concession was granted by Lo Bengula in 1888. The Charter to the South Africa Company was given in 1889; possession of Mashonaland was taken by Jameson and his pioneers on September 12th, 1890; Bulawayo was entered in 1893, and thus the Lo Bengula Concession grew to be Rhodesia. Only four years ago! But during this brief interval the advance has been so rapid that, though at home people may vaguely believe in it, one has to see the town of Bulawayo and to come in personal contact with its people to fully comprehend what has been done, and to rightly understand the situation. With the clearer view gained by a personal visit the huge map in the Stock Exchange, which shows the estates, farms, townships, and mines of Rhodesia, becomes an encyclopaedia of information—the plans of Bulawayo and Salisbury, and other towns which have arisen in Rhodesia, valuable directories. If fresh from an inspection and study of these you step out and look at the town of Bulawayo, and glance at the country, you begin to share the local knowledge of the inhabitants, see with their eyes, understand on what they base their hopes, and grasp the real meaning of pushing a railway 500 miles to reach a town of 3000 people. So that, while at home men were arguing that the Rudd-Rhodes Concession was valueless, and Rhodesia a fraud, the land was being avidly bought, prospectors had discovered gold reefs, shafts had been sunk, tunnels had been made to get a fair idea of the value of the reefs, a nominal capital of many millions—some say twenty millions, some say double that sum—had been assured for operations, towns had been created with all the comforts suited to new colonists, and the embryo State was fairly started into existence.
While being instructed in the hopes and ambitions of several of the local people, my knowledge of how other young countries, such as the States, Canada, Australia, had been affected by the extension of the railway into parts as thinly inhabited as Rhodesia, induced me to cast my glance far beyond Rhodesia, that I might see what was likely to be its destiny, whether it was to be a Free State like Orange, self-sufficient and complacent within its own limits, or broadly ambitious like Illinois State, of which Chicago is the heart. Assuming that the energy which has already astonished us be continued, there are enormous possibilities in view. Bulawayo is 1360 miles from Cape Town, but it is only 1300 miles of land travel from Cairo, for the rest of the distance may be made over deep lakes and navigable rivers; it is but 1300 miles to Mossamedes, in Angola, which would bring the town within fifteen days from London; it is only 450 miles from Beira, on the East Coast, which would give it another port of entry open to commerce from the Suez Canal, India, Australia, and New Zealand; it is but 350 miles from N’gami; it must tap British Central Africa and the southern parts of the Congo State.
That is the position acquired by Bulawayo by the railway from Cape Town. Chicago, less than 60 years ago, had far less pretensions than this town, and yet it has now a million and a half of people.
Something of what Chicago has become Bulawayo may aspire to. The vast coal fields to which the new railway is to run, the stone, granite, sandstone, trachyte, the woods, minerals, gold, copper, lead, and iron, the enormous agricultural area, are valuable assets which must nourish it to an equal destiny. Then the Victoria Falls, larger than Niagara, what mighty electrical power lies stored there! I merely mention these things hap-hazard with the view of assisting my readers to understand the significance of these festivities. Many men will think and meditate on them, and new confidence, courage, and energy will be begotten to stimulate them to greater designs and larger effort.
But how does the scene at Bulawayo affect the political world? It seems to me to have great importance for all South African and British politicians for the way it affects Germany, Portugal, the Congo Free State, and Cape Colony. It will cause people to revise their opinions, and to clear their minds of all previous policies. Any influence that Germany may have hoped to exercise on South African politics has received a check by the insuperable barrier that has been created by those slender lines of steel between its South-West African Colony and the Dutch Republics. The Bechuana Crown Colony and Protectorate, through which they run, must receive a percentage of all immigrants to Rhodesia. These last two are far in advance of the German Colony, and each day must see them strengthened, so that they will become formidable obstacles in the way of German aspirations. These colonies lying along the length of the western frontier of the Transvaal State are four times larger than the Transvaal, and their grand stock-raising areas and agricultural plains having now become easily accessible, cannot remain long unoccupied. I fancy, therefore, that the ambition of Germany to rival our claims to the paramountcy will become wholly extinguished now, and that her thinkers, like wise men, will prepare their minds for the new problems which must be met in a not remote future.
The populating of Rhodesia by mixed races of whites of a superior order to any near it must exercise the Portuguese, whose territory lies between Rhodesia and the Indian Ocean. The iron road leading to it cannot be closed. The future of the country is no longer doubtful. We have tested its climate ourselves; we have heard the general conviction that these lofty plains, 4500 feet above the sea, suit the constitution of the white race; we have seen a hundred English children going from Bulawayo to a picnic to celebrate the arrival of the railway, and assuredly that would have been impossible on a tropical day in any other tropical country I know of. We have seen scores of infants on the streets, in the suburbs, on the plains outside, in arms, and in perambulators, and they all looked thriving, pink, and happy. The market of Bulawayo each day shows us English vegetables fresh from the garden. We have seen specimens of the cereals. Well, then, it appears to me certain that there will be a masterful population in this country before long, which it would be the height of unwisdom to vex overmuch with obsolete ordinances and bye-laws such as obtain in Portuguese Africa, and burdensome taxes and rates on the traffic that must arise as this country grows in wealth and population. It may be hoped that intelligent Portuguese will do all in their power to promote concord and good feeling with their neighbour, to check refractory chiefs from doing anything to disturb the peace, for nothing could make the people of Rhodesia more restless than interruption to traffic, and a sense of insecurity. If they do that the Portuguese territory must become enriched by the neighbourhood of Rhodesia.
The Congo State will doubtless recognise its profit by the advent of the railway to Bulawayo and the extension of the line towards its southern borders, and the arrangements of the Government will be such as to ensure respect for boundaries and to teach the native tribes that transgression of such will be dangerous.
The British Government have a valuable object lesson for the development of African colonies. For over two hundred years the West African colonies have been stagnating for lack of such means of communication. They have been unable to utilise their resources. Their natural pretensions to the hinterlands have been grievously curtailed, and what ought to have been British is now French. Nyasaland has also too long suffered from Imperial parsimony. The function of government should comprise something more than police duty or the collection of taxes. The removal of causes injurious to health and life, and the establishment of communication as required by circumstances of climate, and needful to augment commerce, are just as urgent as the prevention of lawlessness and the collection of imposts. The climate of Nyasaland has slain more valuable men than the assegais of the Angoni. Against the latter the Government sent their Sikhs; against the former they have done nothing. Many of the sick colonists might have been saved, if, when weakened by anaemia, a little railway past the Shire Rapids had taken them quickly through the malarious land. If it be worth while to retain and administer Nyasaland, it is surely worth while to supply the population with certain means to send the fruits of their industry to the world’s markets, and to enable them to receive the necessaries of existence without endangering their lives in the effort or risking the loss of their goods. Therefore, to a Government that has shown such dread of constructing an insignificant railway a hundred miles in length, the enterprise of the Chartered Company in constructing one five hundred miles long—and starting immediately upon an extension two hundred and twenty miles—at the cost of one and three-quarter millions, must be exceedingly stimulative. The antique and barbarous method of porterage should be abolished in every British colony, more especially in tropical colonies, where exposure to sun and rain means death to white and black.
To the South African Republic it is vitally important to weigh well in what manner the Bulawayo railway will affect her future. The Republic will soon be surrounded by a rampart of steel on three sides and alien land and ocean on the other. From Beira, north of the Republic, a railway will run west to Salisbury, and thence south to Bulawayo and the Cape. With two ways of ingress from the sea a country like Rhodesia—with as good a climate as the Transvaal State, with resources which tend to rapid prosperity, enjoying impartial and liberal laws, just and pure administration, opening its arms widely to the whole world without regard to race, blessed with ample domains and suited to the needs of all classes—must necessarily prove more attractive to all people in search of homes, than a country which only favours Dutch burghers; and Rhodesia therefore bids fair in a few years to overtake the Republic in population, and even to surpass it. The Boers do not avail themselves of the advantages of their position to that fulness which would make it doubtful whether Rhodesia or the Transvaal offered the most inducements to intending settlers. On the contrary, the common report is that the object of the Boers is to restrict population and reserve the State for Boer progeny. I shall see the country for myself, I hope, and either verify or disprove it. But if true, the attempt to suppress population and growth by restrictions, monopolies, and vexatious ordinances is simple imbecility, as compared to the Chartered Company’s policy of stimulating commerce by giving free rein to enterprise, and keeping the paths and gates to its territory freely open to all comers. If there is an intelligent man in the Transvaal, it must be clear to him that the Republic must soon lose the rank among South African States to which she was entitled by her wonderful resources and undoubted advantages; and the only thing that can save her from degradation, neglect, and financial difficulties, is the absorption of that alien population which crowds her cities and clamours for political rights.
Cape Colony, though much is due to it for its support of the Bechuana railway, is not wholly free from the blame of inertness in the past. One cannot look at the map of Africa and miss seeing that extraordinary territory labelled German close to Cape Colony, without being reminded of the obtuseness shown by the Cape democracy. But the Germans are a great nation, rich, commerce-loving, and enterprising, and the Cape people need to be warned, considering that they are largely mixed up with Dutch Boers who are slow to move and sadly behind the times. If the Germans chose to invest 4,000,000 pounds in railways from the mouth of the Swakop to the banks of the Orange, they would be formidable competitors for the trade of Bechuanaland and the north of the colony, and Swakop is three days nearer Europe than Table Bay. The railways in America created cities and filled the wastes with settlers, and every new settler was supposed to be worth 200 pounds to the nation; and in that country they have a mile of railway to every twenty square miles of country.
The Cape has but a mile of railway to every 112 square miles. The railways should spread out like a fan from Cape Town. The existing lines require straightening greatly. It is not good policy that the line to Natal should run through alien States, nor is it conducive to the development of the Colony. Some railways may not show large dividends, but they are indispensable to development and communication: they give value to acres which otherwise would be worthless, and indirectly contribute to revenue in other ways than by dividends. Hence Cape Colony may learn a good deal from this new railway.
I think I have said enough to illustrate the position in which Bulawayo has been placed by the arrival of the railway. At present its broad avenues and streets give one an idea that it has made too much of itself. When the avenues are about 90 feet wide and the streets 130 feet wide, naturally the corrugated-iron one-storeyed cottages and the one-storeyed brick buildings appear very diminutive; and the truth is that, were the streets of proportionate width to the height of the buildings, the town would appear very small. The plain upon which it stands gives an idea of infinity that renders poor one-storeyed Bulawayo very finite-looking indeed. The town, however, has laid itself out for future greatness, and the designers of it have been wise. Winnipeg, in Manitoba, which Bulawayo reminds me of by the surrounding plain, was laid out on just such a spacious plan; but ten years later six-storeyed buildings usurped the place of the isolated iron hut and cottage, and the streets were seen to be no whit too wide. Ten years hence Bulawayo will aspire higher towards the sky, and when the electric trams run in double lines between rows of shade trees, there will be no sense of disproportion between buildings and streets. On the walls of the Stock Exchange I found hanging plans and elevations of the brick and stone buildings already contracted for. They are not to be very lofty, none over two storeys, but architecturally they are most attractive. These new buildings will, perhaps, stand for about five years, for, according to my experience, it is not until the tenth year that the double storey becomes the fashion. At the twentieth year begins the triple storey; at thirty years the fourth storey begins to appear.
East of the town area devoted to commerce is a broad strip of park. It occupies a gentle hollow in the plain, watered by a crooked ditch, called spruit here, running through a rich, dark, and very thirsty earth. It contains a few puddles here and there along its course. Only a portion of the park is laid out as yet, and that has been well and carefully done. Its plots contain a few hundreds of grape vines, which look like currant bushes. There are also about a hundred very young orange trees, a few flowers, shrubs, etc. A stone column to the memory of Captain Lendy occupies an eminence in it. The whole park has a sombre appearance, owing to the dark soil and ironstone freely sprinkling it. But as the bushes, shrubs, and flowers have only been lately planted, and as around the forcing houses there is a large number of young plants in tins and pots, soon to be transplanted, a couple of years will make an immense difference in the appearance of the pleasaunce.
Beyond and east of the park is the residential part of Bulawayo, divided into two avenues and nine streets running east and west, and eight roads running north and south, named respectively Townsend, Lawley, Livingstone, Pauling, Clark, Duncan, and Heyman, and Park Road, parallel with the park.
Messrs Adcock and Norton have furnished me with the prices of stands, or town lots, obtained by them during the last six months. The most noteworthy are Lot 708, with large wood and iron house, 1900 pounds; Lot 234, southern half only, bought by Curtis and Co., outfitters, Johannesburg, 3500 pounds; Lot 239, half only, bought by Gowie and Co., seedsmen, of Grahamstown, 2000 pounds; Lots 451-452 bought by a London firm, 3000 pounds; Lot 333, bought by Stuart Campbell and Co., merchants, Johannesburg, 2000 pounds; eastern half of Lot 133, 70 feet frontage, on 8th Avenue, purchased by Hepworths, manufacturers, Leeds, England, and South Africa, 5000 pounds; Lot 346, corner portion, bought by Knight and Co., boot and shoe makers, Grahamstown, 3600 pounds.
From various people I have learned that the average estimate of the population is 3000 whites, one-fifth of whom are women and children. There are several hotels, the best of which are the Palace, Maxim, and Charter; but none of them are fit for ladies, and scarcely for gentlemen. The noise and clatter at these forbid sleep, except between midnight and 5 a.m. The food is somewhat coarse, but plentiful; the tea and coffee such as one may obtain on a Cape liner—that is, too strong an infusion of one, and a watery decoction of the other. The cooks evidently are common ship-cooks, as one may gather by the way they boil potatoes and cabbages. The bread is good, the butter is tolerable, the meat is like leather. The waiters, though civil and willing enough, are awkward and new to their work. Board and lodging may be obtained for from 14 to 18 pounds per month, two beds in a room 12 feet by 12 feet. At the cheaper boarding-houses it will cost between 4 and 10 pounds. The rent of lodgings in a small room amounts to 15 shillings per week.
Prices are likely to be much lower shortly. At present tea is 3 shillings per pound, coffee 2 shillings 6 pence, rice 10 pence per pound, fresh meat 1 shilling 6 pence, corned beef 3 shillings per tin of 2 pounds, flour 6 pence per pound, soap per bar 1 shilling 6 pence, fresh butter 7 shillings to 8 shillings per pound, sugar 1 shilling, matches 1 penny per box, eggs 15 shillings to 18 shillings per dozen, candles 3 pence each, fowls 5 shillings each, potatoes 160 pounds for 4 pounds; vegetables dear.
Wages are high, as might be supposed. Masons and bricklayers obtain 30 shillings per day, tailors 35 shillings per day, carpenters 25 shillings to 30 shillings per day, compositors 9 pounds per week, plumbers and painters 9 pounds per week, waiters, 12 to 15 pounds per month, clerks, first-class, 35 pounds per month, ordinary clerks, 15 to 25 pounds per month, white labourers, 5 shillings per day, black labourers from 1 shilling 3 pence to 2 shillings per day. The Government lately gave eighty white labourers work on the park at 5 shillings per day to keep them from starvation.
The finest buildings of Bulawayo are, first, the long, low building occupied by the Stock Exchange, Telegraph, and Post Office, the Bulawayo Club building, which is extremely comfortable, Sauer’s Chambers, and the Palace Hotel, the latter being incomplete; when finished commercial travellers will, no doubt, find it comfortable, and it may be suitable for ladies.
There are two daily papers, theBulawayo ChronicleandMatabele Times, sold at 3 pence per copy. I have also seen theRhodesia Review, which is, I believe, a weekly issue. There are seven churches—the Wesleyan, Congregational, Church of England, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic, and one Temperance Hall. There is, of course, a gaol, a fire brigade, and police station. In the gaol are several prisoners, white and black. The crimes of the whites have been burglary, theft, and drunkenness. Among the blacks are fourteen prisoners under sentence of death.
The railway station is fairly adapted for its purpose, though its construction was, necessarily, rapid. The settling reservoirs, fed by pipes from the dams, are not| far from it; but I fear that they will be of little use, as the soil is too porous. A coating of cement would make them effective, but the general opinion is that cement would be too costly.
The great defect of Bulawayo is the smallness of the water supply and the badness of it. At present the inhabitants depend on wells, and water is easily obtainable at 30 and 40 feet, but the water is of a hard and indifferent quality. Up on the Maatschesmuslopje stream, about two and a half miles from the town, there have been constructed three dams of different lengths and varying heights. Number 1 dam is the nearest to Bulawayo, and has a solid stone and cement core starting from the bedrock 10 feet wide, and decreasing by set-backs of 6 inches to a width of 2 feet at the top. Number 2 dam has a puddled core of clay faced with stone, and Number 3 is of similar construction. In April last these dams were full and overflowing, but unfortunately, through bad construction and want of care, there were several leaks, and it is now decided to demolish two of the dams and rebuild them. Numbers 2 and 3 are quite fit to retain the water catchment, and Number 1 will be finished by the end of the year. The estimated storage of water by the three dams is calculated to be between 40 and 45 million gallons. A fourth dam, about to be erected, will, it is thought, considerably increase the storage.
Several critics are of the opinion that the dams will not retain any water, though they were full last April.
We have had four copious showers of rain since our arrival on the 4th inst, but a few hours later the spruits, gullies, and watercourses were almost waterless, the streets showing scarcely a trace of the rain, so porous and thirsty is the soil. Daily it becomes apparent to me that the inhabitants of Bulawayo should lose no time in studying the art of water conservation. In a country just within the tropics an abundant supply of water is essential, and thirty gallons per head per day would not be excessive. Ten thousand inhabitants should be able to command 300,000 gallons daily, but Bulawayo within twenty years will have probably 20,000, and there is no river between here and Khama’s country that could supply 600,000 gallons daily. Numbers of little watersheds may be drained into reservoirs, but if I were a citizen of Bulawayo my anxiety would be mainly on the subject of water. The water question is not at all an insoluble one, because, for the matter of that, Bulawayo will have always the Zambesi tributaries to fall back upon, especially the Guay River.
At the north end of the town we come to a gate leading to an avenue which ran perfectly straight for two miles and a half. The carriage road, which it is intended to macadamise, is about 30 feet wide, and running parallel with it on either side is an enclosure 50 feet wide, to be planted with shade trees. Thus the avenue embraces a width of about 130 feet. At the extremity of it is the Government House, standing in grounds which four years ago were occupied by Lo Bengula’s kraal. We were all curious to see the place, and one of the first objects shown to us was the small tree under which the Matabele king dispensed his bloody judgments.
Here is a description of the place from “Zambesia”: “The King’s capital stands upon a ridge on the northern side of the Bulawayo River, in a most commanding position, overlooking as it does the entire country round. Every yard of the ground was covered with dung, layer after layer; the whole place was filthily dirty. The King used to sit on a block of wood in the middle of a great pole stockade, surrounded by sheep and goats.”
The first sentence is most misleading, though not inaccurate. The kraal stood upon the same level as the plain of New Bulawayo, but the “Bulawayo River”—a dry watercourse most of the year—has scoured out a broad hollow to a depth of about 20 feet in the plain, and, as the kraal was seated on the brow above it, it enables one to have a view of a circle of about fifteen miles in diameter, within which are probably three or four of these long, broad swells of plain land.
Government House is a long, low, white-washed house, in Dutch Colonial style, with a pillared verandah outside. It is the property of Mr Rhodes, as well as the avenue just mentioned. I am told he possesses about eighty square miles altogether hereabouts, and, by the way he is developing his estates, it will some day be a beautiful as well as valuable property.
This reminds me that I have not once mentioned Rhodes, though when describing Rhodesia one ought not to omit his name; but the fact is he has preferred to remain in the veld rather than undergo the fatigue of the banquets and ceremonies. From Cape Town here many men have spoken of him to me, and always with unqualified admiration. I know no man who occupies such a place in men’s thoughts. His absence has given rise to all kinds of conjectures as to the cause of it. Some say it is due to the fact that the Cape elections are approaching, and he did not wish to be forced to a pronouncement of policy; others that it is due to Dr Jameson’s zealous care of his health, as he suffers from heart complaint; others again say it is due to a wounded spirit, which too long grieving might easily end in a Timonian moroseness. Whatever the true cause may be, he has so planted himself in the affections of the people that no eccentricity of his can detract from his merits. When a man scatters 200,000 a year on the country out of which he made his wealth, it covers a multitude of sins in the minds of the recipients of his gratuitous favours.
“He does mad and fantastic executionEngaging and redeeming of himself,With such a careless face and forceless care,As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,Bade him win all.”
“He does mad and fantastic executionEngaging and redeeming of himself,With such a careless face and forceless care,As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,Bade him win all.”
The festivities of the celebration end to-night, or rather to-morrow morning at 1 a.m., and then Bulawayo will be left to itself to begin its own proper work of development. We have seen what Bulawayo is as it terminated the employment of the ox-wagon, and had just emerged out of the sore troubles caused by war, famine, and rinderpest. The next train that arrives after our departure will be the beginning of a new era. The machinery that litters the road will be brought up, and the ox-wagons drawn by fourteen oxen, and the wagons drawn by twelve mules, and those drawn by twenty donkeys, will haul it to the mines, and hence we may hope at the end of a year or so that Rhodesia will have proved by its gold output its intrinsic value as a gold held. In my next letter I mean to touch upon this subject.