At this time the Matabele kingdom was only second in power to any of the native tribes south of the Zambesi, and now, since the subjugation of the southern Zulus, it must rank as absolutely the most powerful of all. It is considerably more than 300 miles long, and from 250 to 300 miles broad. According to Mr. Mackenzie, Moselikatze, the founder of this extensive kingdom, was the son of Matshobane, a Zulu captain in Natal; he was taken prisoner by Chaka, the most powerful of the Zulu chiefs, who subsequently, when he found out the courage of his captive, gave him the command of one of his marauding expeditions; but Moselikatze, instead of returning with his booty, carried it off to the heart of what is now the Transvaal country, subdued the Bakhatlas, Baharutse, and other Bechuana tribes, and finally settled in the highlands round the Marico and its tributaries. Here he was attacked by the Griqua chief, Berend-Berend, whom he defeated and killed. All this, however, was but the beginning of a series of engagements. Two Zulu armies in succession were sent after him as a recreant, one by Chaka, and the other by his successor Dingan, but both failed to dislodge him. His next assailants were the Boers, who were most anxious to get rid of such a dangerous neighbour, and to drive him from the beautiful Marico country, which they coveted for themselves. To accomplish their aim they sent out a considerable force in 1836, and attacking the Zulu at the foot of one of the hills, completely defeated him. Moselikatze gathered together the little remnant of his force, including only forty “ring-heads” (full grown warriors), and quitted the district, making his way to the north, and laying waste the whole country as he proceeded. It was his plan to found a new settlement on the other side of the Zambesi; but the tsetse-fly did what it seemed forbidden to human hand to do, and checked his career. He was in consequence obliged to fall back, and began to attack first the Makalaka villages, and then to carry his ravages on to the Manansas and others. His mode of dealing with these agricultural settlements was to set fire to them in the middle of the night, to kill the men as they rushed out of their burning huts, and to carry off the women and children, as well as the cattle. In this way his power began again to increase, until after a while South Africa had a new Zulu empire. All the stolen boys were brought up as soldiers, and such as were capable of bearing arms were at once incorporated into the army; the women were given to the warriors, the cattle being deemed the king’s special property, and serving to maintain his ever increasing regiments. Whenever Moselikatze observed any signs of his warriors treating the women better than their cattle he came to the conclusion that the men were growing effeminate, and at once gave peremptory orders for the dangerous women to be slaughtered. During his annual marauding expeditions into the neighbourhood, thousands of helpless creatures lost their lives, for besides the men, all people incapable of work, young children, and babies, and some of the women, were relentlessly massacred.

From my own observation, and from what I gathered from Mr. Mackenzie, Westbeech, and the traders, I should describe the Matabele Zulu government as a military despotism, with supreme control over every man and beast, and every acre of land in the country. Each division of the army is under the command of an “induna” or chief, with several sub-chiefs holding commission as officers. The rank and file fulfil their commanders’ orders with blind obedience, but the superior and inferior chiefs are always at rivalry, and if they fail to win the approbation of the king by their feats of bravery, they try and curry favour with him by carrying him tales of slander against each other. The king keeps several executioners, who perpetrate their deeds under cover of night; and as the kaffir-corn beer which is served out with the meat at supper rarely fails to induce a sound sleep, the opportunity is readily found for what is known as “the king’s knife” to do its work.

Mr. Mackenzie told me of an instance that will serve as an illustration of what I have been saying. The bravest man in Moselikatze’s army was Monyebe, one of the superior chiefs, who in acknowledgment of his services had been rewarded by the king with a number of presents. This so far aroused the jealousy of the other chiefs that they conspired to accuse him to the king of witchcraft and treachery. Moselikatze allowed himself to listen to their slander, and without giving Monyebe a chance of exonerating himself, kept the accusation a thorough secret from him, and gave permission to the chiefs to kill him. Next morning nothing more remained of the king’s favourite than a few ashes smouldering at the door of his hut.

When Mr. Mackenzie visited Matabele-land in 1863, he found very few real Zulu soldiers; the flower of the army consisted of Bechuanas, who as boys had either been stolen or exacted as tribute by Moselikatze during his residence in the Transvaal, the younger regiments being principally composed of Makalaka and Mashona lads recently enlisted.

In times of peace the boys are sent out to take care of the cattle, but on their return home they are always carefully instructed in the use of weapons. This constant exercise makes them so strong and muscular that a Masarwa straight from the Kalahari Bushveldt, and another having undergone his training with the Matabele, could not be recognized as belonging to the same tribe. The Matabele warriors live in barracks, and domestic life is quite unknown; only in very exceptional cases is it allowable for any one but a chief to treat his wife otherwise than as a slave, though it must be allowed that there is hardly any appreciable difference between the two conditions. The king does not prevent people of other tribes from practising their own religious and superstitious ceremonies, subject to the general prohibition that no subject of his may be a Christian. The ivory-traders followed the missionaries into the country; they found a ready sale for guns and ammunition, but the natives were little disposed to purchase any articles of clothing.

Every year before starting on their expeditions of plunder the Matabele perform their Pina ea Morimo, or religious war-dance. The warriors assemble on the parade-ground in full military costume, their heads, breasts, and loins being adorned with coverings made of black ostrich feathers. A black bull is led forward and baited till it is angry; it is then chased by the soldiers, until, covered with blood, it sinks lame and exhausted to the ground; a few practised strokes then sever the muscles; the flesh is stripped off in cutlets and held for a few minutes before a fire, and the men proceed eagerly to devour the half roasted meat, convinced that in swallowing it in this semi-raw condition they are acquiring the strength and courage that will equip them for their undertaking.

The European settlement on the Tati was surrounded by low hills, partly formed of ferruginous mica, quartz, and granite, some being isolated mounds, whilst others were portions of the slope of the river-valley. I made excursions to them in all directions, although I was warned to be on my guard against the lions that haunted the neighbourhood.

On arriving at the settlement I found that Pit Jacobs, like Mr. Brown, was away from home. He had gone elephant-hunting with one of his sons.

I went to the hills next day and saw numbers of pits, some fifty feet deep, that had been made by the diggers in their search for gold; and on one hill to the north, contiguous to the slope of the Tati valley, I found another ruin, consisting of the remains of a wall that formed a rampart round the hill-top, joined on to a second wall three times its size that ran round the next hill a little lower down. It was over three feet thick, and, like what I had previously seen, made of stones, blocks of iron mica, piled together without cement. On the inside it could be seen how the erection was made of oblong lumps of various dimensions, but outside, probably with some view to symmetry and decoration, there had been inserted double rows of stone hewn into a kind of tile, and placed obliquely one row at right angles to the other. Each inclosure had an entrance facing the north, that of the largest being protected by the wall on the right projecting outwards, whilst on the left it curved inwards towards the centre. Altogether the resemblance between these ruins and those we had seen before on the Shasha was very striking; to my mind they conveyed the impression that the walls might originally have been put up with some reference to the gold that was being found in the locality; but I look for a future visit, in which I may be able to make such investigations as may settle whether they were erected by the Mashonas in the east or by the people of Monopotapa.

Hearing on my return that Pit Jacobs had come home, I called and stayed some hours with him. It could hardly be otherwise than with intense interest that I listened to the recounting of the many episodes in the experience of five-and-twenty years of a man who had acquired the reputation of being the second-best elephant-hunter in all South Africa.

Numerous as lions are in other parts, I never heard of them being so bold as they notoriously are in the neighbourhood of the Tati station. The gold-diggers suffered greatly from their depredations, and they had been known to get inside kraals enclosed by a thorn-fence six feet high, and the same thickness at its base. Brown and Pit Jacobs had often seen them prowling in the night in the space between their houses, and one morning, while the mining operations were going on, a native labourer on entering the coal-cellar to get fuel for the engine, was pounced upon by a lion, that would certainly have torn him to pieces if it had not been that it was old and its teeth blunt. On another occasion a lioness had been shot at midday; and within the last few days Mr. Brown’s horse had been dragged from the stable, which was well protected by a strong fence, except on the side facing the house. These are facts that illustrate the persistent daring of the lions in the locality, and of which an example now came within my own experience.

I had occasion to make some purchases, and on the morning of the 2nd of April called at the office of Mr. Brown’s foreman. Whilst we were transacting our business, a negro came rushing in with the intelligence that lions were among the cattle. No time was to be lost in giving chase. I hurried with what speed I could down to our camp, nearly a quarter of a mile away, to get my Snider and some cartridges, and communicated the news to Bradshaw, who entered into the spirit of the thing at once, and seized his double-barrelled muzzle-loader, a weapon with which he had often done wonders. We quickly made up a party of about twenty, including besides ourselves a lot of half-armed negroes, Pit Jacobs’ son, and the half-caste hunter Africa, the two latter being on horseback. Leaving the hill surmounted with the ruins on our left, we worked our way up the river-valley, which was here from 200 to 300 yards wide, to a spot close to the river where there was a mass of mimosas. On our way the negroes told us that the lions, only the day before, had attacked some cattle down at a watering-place that had been dug in the sand at the river-side, not very distant from where we were; a lioness had seized a cow by the heel in a very unusual way, and had dragged it to the ground. Acting upon this information, we turned our course in that direction, and in a short time arrived at a mimosa, upon which we were told that the terrified herdsmen had taken refuge on the previous day. We discovered the herdsman’s dog still lingering near the tree, and guided by its barking, we followed on to a glade, where, we caught sight of the head of a cow above the long grass, and in another moment ascertained that it was being mangled by a great lioness. Without a word of warning, before we were aware of his intention, Africa fired. No luckier shot was ever aimed. The bullet hit the brute in the back, and shattered the vertebral column; it rolled over in the grass behind its prey. The dog, which was famous among the Tati people for its courage, and which already had been disturbing the lioness at its meal, now darted forward, and seizing it by the ear drew back the head, while the negroes pummelled away at its sides. The ill-fated cow was not quite dead, although the lioness had begun to gnaw at its entrails; we put the poor thing at once out of its misery. Africa was kind enough to make me a present of the skin of the lioness.

Since I met Africa on the Chobe, Khame had banished him from the Bamangwato country on account of his poaching propensities with regard to elephants and ostriches; he had now come to Tati, and hoped to induce Lo Bengula to accept payment from him and allow him to hunt ostriches on his land.

Until the 7th my time was fully occupied in making a geological investigation of the neighbourhood, and in making records of some of the interesting adventures of Pit Jacobs, Bradshaw, and another Boer hunter, who had just arrived. One day Africa received a visit from his son, who brought him some puku-meat; he cautioned us to be more than ever on our guard against lions, saying that at his own encampment, only a few miles away, he hardly ever passed a night without being disturbed by them. Another ivory-dealer arrived next day from the south, by way of Shoshong; he seemed to be a keen man of business, but nothing more; like other people, he complained of the number of lions in the neighbourhood, and mentioned that water was scarce between this place and Shoshong.

Westbeech arrived from Gubuluwayo on the following day. He was accompanied by his friend Philipps, and by F., an ivory-trader. Mr. Brown and his young bride returned likewise at the same time. Westbeech brought a document attested by Lo Bengula’s mark, granting permission for elephant-hunting on his western territory in consideration of the payment of a salted carcase of a horse. Mr. Brown and the trader both told me several things that entertained me about Lo Bengula. The king had a very corpulent sister, who exercised a very considerable influence over him. On being asked one day why she did not get married, she replied that she was too fat to walk, and as her brother was the only person in the country who kept a waggon, she thought it was far better for her to remain where she was, and not to entertain any idea of having a husband.

It is my own impression about Westbeech that he never turned to such good account as he might the favour he enjoyed with Lo Bengula; I think too that he yielded over much to Sepopo, and failed to manage Khame judiciously. In the course of his twelve years’ residence amongst the various tribes he had mastered all their languages in a way that could not fail to give him a great advantage at the different courts. As a proof of his familiarity with Lo Bengula, I was told that during his last visit he and some friends (probably some of the ivory-traders, or the two missionaries who resided in the vicinity of the royal quarters) went to call upon the king just at the moment when the dish (which, by the way, I may mention was rarely washed) was brought in containing the dinner for the high table. Without waiting for any invitation, Westbeech calmly proceeded to help himself, and to hand some of the food to his companions. The indunas, who were waiting in expectation, began to grumble; “George,” they said, “is treating the king like a child.” “Yes,” replied Westbeech; “I have been trusted by Moselikatze himself to drive his waggon and treat him as a child; and surely if I may do this with Moselikatze, I may do it with his son too; I am treating Lo Bengula as my child.” The answer seemed thoroughly to satisfy the chiefs, and they clapped their hands in applause.

I asked the Masupia servant whom Westbeech had taken with him to Gubuluwayo, whether the Matabele women were handsome? “O, not at all,” was his answer; “they wear no aprons, and are not tattooed.” Their well-built forms and comely features had evidently made no impression upon the man.

Before closing my notes about Tati, I cannot help mentioning an incident that occurred in Pit Jacobs’ house, in February, 1876. Jacobs himself, with two of his sons and his elder daughter, had gone on a hunting-excursion to South Matabele-land, leaving his wife, his younger daughter, just now married to Mr. Brown, his two little boys, and a Masarwa servant in the house. The house was what is locally known as a “hartebeest” building, its four walls consisting of laths plastered over with red brick earth, and covered in with a gabled roof made of rafters thatched with grass. Inside, of the same material as the walls, was a partition dividing the house into two apartments, of which the larger was the living-room, and the other the sleeping-chamber of the family. In the larger room, amongst other furniture, stood a sewing-machine that Mr. Brown had just bought as a present for his intended wife; in the other room, opposite the door, were two beds. On this particular evening, the door of the house, which was made in two parts, had the upper division open; the window in front was likewise open, and a kitten was sitting on the sill. Mr. Brown had just called to pay an evening visit, and Mrs. Jacobs had gone to put the two boys to bed, laying herself down for a few minutes beside one of them.

Now the whole village was aware that a half-starved leopard was haunting the place, trying one cattle-kraal after another, and doing serious mischief amongst the poultry; every fence ought to have been well guarded, but somehow or other the leopard had gained an entrance into Jacobs’ enclosure, and catching sight of the kitten in the open window, made a spring to seize it. The kitten, however, was not taken unawares, but leaping from the window-sill hid itself under the sewing-machine, and the leopard, missing its aim, bounded through the window right into the middle of the room, where the two lovers were sitting.

They called out in alarm, but were hardly more terrified than the brute itself, which, in order to escape, rushed into the bedroom, and under the bed where Mrs. Jacobs was lying. Catching sight of it, she cried out to know what it was, and in order to pacify her, Mr. Brown and her daughter replied that most likely it was a dog. Satisfied in her own mind that a dog would not have made them scream out in such alarm, and concluding that it was a hyæna, she started up, took the child by which she was lying in her arms, and ran into the living-room.

Finding that she had brought out only one of the little boys, Brown thought it was best to tell her the truth, which made her so agitated that she would have gone back quite unprotected to the other bed, if she had not been prevented by force.

The immediate question now was how the brute could be disposed of. There was a loaded elephant-gun hanging up inside the partition, but in the commotion no one thought of it. Brown took hold of a kitchen-knife, but afterwards it was remembered that the Masarwa servant had an old assegai; the man was soon sent for; Brown took the spear; Miss Jacobs held the lantern; Mrs. Jacobs clung to her daughter, and the servant kept close behind. At the appearance of the light, the leopard was more terrified than ever, and the hubbub of voices, English, Dutch, and Sesarwa, only increased its alarm. Making a sudden spring it lighted on the bed, where the child was sleeping. The little fellow slumbered on peacefully, and knew nothing of what happened until the next morning.

With such an excited cluster of people at his elbow, it was not very surprising that Brown made a bad aim with his assegai; the point merely grazed the creature’s skin, and in an instant it flew at his breast, so that he could feel its claws upon his neck; losing his balance he fell over; the women came tumbling on him, dragging the old Masarwa on the top of them all, the commotion putting the leopard into such a state of bewilderment that it never used a fang, but bounded forth, first into the other room, and then through the open portion of the door.

Thus relieved of their anxiety, and finding no harm done, they all laughed heartily, and congratulated each other at the happy issue of an adventure which might have had a tragical dénouement.

Leaving the Tati station on the 10th, we made our way through wooded hills till we came again to the sandy Shasha, which receives the Tati and many other tributaries of a similar character. Close to where we halted, at the mouth of a dried-up spruit, there was a small deep pool in the river-bed, containing crocodiles.

In the course of the next two days we crossed as many as fourteen spruits that were affluents of the Shasha, Matliutse, and Seribe rivers, our road all along being very bad, and obstructed with rocks.

One whole day we halted on the Matliutse, which now, instead of the Tati, forms part of the boundary between the Matabele and Bamangwato territories. Here there was an interesting double row of hills, some being conical, and some perfectly hexagonal in shape.

The heat now became extremely oppressive, and after crossing the Kutse-Khani and Lothlakane rivers, we halted by the bank of a third, named the Gokwe, where our animals were encouraged to drink freely on account of the dearth of water which we were led to expect during our next stage. After passing a hilly country we came on the following afternoon to the Serule, and caught sight of the chain of the Choppo mountains running south to south-west, their highest points being at the two extremities of the ridge.

On the 16th we entered the valley of the Palachwe, crossing the bed of the Lotsane the same day. It is my belief that these two rivers unite at the foot of the Choppo heights, and continue their course below the northern declivity. The Lotsane ford was one of the most troublesome on the whole way from Matabele-land, and some years ago had a bad name amongst the hunters and ivory-traders, on account of its being haunted by a large number of lions that were reputed to be unusually audacious.

The drive of the next day brought us through some hilly country, where there were a good many rain-pools, only three of which, however, retained any water in the winter. The second of the series was called Lemone Pan, and both here, and at the next, we found Bamangwato cattle-stations. Much to Z.’s discomfort, a number of Matabele people had accompanied our caravan all the way from Tati.

At night we made our camp at the Chakane Pan, the last of the three rain-pools, where we were told that Sechele was at war with the Bakhatlas on his territory. As we were unable to kill any game, and the provisions that we had brought from Tati were beginning to run short, we slaughtered one of our reserve bullocks. After starting again we crossed the Tawani, and found ourselves in the course of the night on the bank of the sandy Mahalapsi river. Early in the morning we were at the foot of the Bamangwato hills and close to Shoshong.

Being afraid to meet Khame, Z. parted company with us at this time, and turned towards the Damara emigrants on the Limpopo.

Hearing that the prolonged drought had scorched up all the grass, and that the Shoshong springs yielded hardly enough water to supply the needs of the population, a good many of our party resolved to rest where they were, and it was only a few of us who proceeded up the Francis Joseph Valley to the town, which was reached after an easy march.