Chapter Three.
Table of Contents Bulawayo, November 11, 1897.
The New Era in Rhodesia.
The festivities are over, and the guests are departing. For seven days we have been entertained as well as the resources of Bulawayo would admit, and the Administrator and Committee have been continuously unflagging in their attentions to us. Next Monday the trains and railway will be occupied in bringing stores and machinery and cattle to supply the needs of the mining industry, and henceforward the traffic will be ordinary and uninterrupted between Cape Town and Bulawayo. On Monday morning also every Bulawayan intends to resume his own proper work, and I suppose that should be the real date of the beginning of the new era in Rhodesia.
What is Rhodesia?
And here, it seems to me, is a fitting place to ask: What is Rhodesia, about which so much has been said and written? What are its prospects? I cannot help but wish I were more qualified by local and technical knowledge to describe the country; but as I have been at some trouble in soliciting the judgment of experienced men, conscientiously weighing the merits of what was told me, and carefully considering what I have personally seen, I can only hope the following summary may have some value to those interested in Rhodesia.
The Land to the North.
I have been asked by my fellow guests at Bulawayo how the face of the country appeared as compared with the tropical regions further north with which I am more familiar. With regard to the superficial aspect of Rhodesia, I see but little difference between it and East Central Africa, and the southern portion of the Congo basin. Indeed, I am much struck with the uniformity of Inner Africa on the whole. Except in the neighbourhood of the great lakes, which mark the results of volcanic action, where great subsidences have occurred, and the great plains have been wrinkled up or heaved into mountains of great height, the body of Inner Africa away from the coasts is very much alike. The main difference is due to latitude. From the Cape Peninsula to north of Salisbury, or the Victoria Falls, the whole country is one continuous plain country. Between the tops of the highest hills and the highest grassy ridge in the Transvaal the difference of altitude seems solely due to the action of the rain. In the Zambesi basin you have a great shallow basin, and directly you cross the river and travel northward the ascent is being made to reach the crest of the watershed between the Zambesi and the Congo, which is but little higher than the highest grassy ridge in the neighbourhood of Salisbury. From thence a gradual descent is made to reach the central depression of the Congo basin. Northward of the Congo watershed, you gain the average altitudes of the grassy ridges of South Africa, and then begin a descent into the basin of the Tchad Lake, and from thence to the Mediterranean the same system of great land waves rolling and subsiding continues.
Noble Timber in Rhodesia.
Latitude-and I might say altitude-however, changes the appearance of the land. Rarely on the tableland of Equatorial Africa do we see the scrub and thorn trees of South Africa. The vegetation there is more robust, the trees taller, the leafage thicker and of a darker green; the mere grasses of the tropics are taller than the trees growing on the plains of Cape Colony, Bechuanaland, and Rhodesia, though in the latter country there are oases favourable to the growth of noble timber. In nitrous belts-fortunately of no great width-in Ugogo, Nyasaland, East Africa, we should be reminded of the thorny productions of Bechuanaland, and ten degrees north of the Equator we should again see a recurrence of them.
A Magnificent Forest of Teak.
It must have struck even the most unobservant of our guests how the land improved as we travelled northward. How the ungrateful looking Karroo of Cape Colony was presently followed by expansive plains covered with dwarf shrubs; how the plains became more promising after we passed the Hart River: how the rolling grassy prairie-like country of Southern Bechuana was followed by the acacias and mimosas of Northern Bechuana; and how as we neared Rhodesia these trees in a few hours of travel rose from 10 feet to 20 feet in height; how the land became more compact, and lost much of its loose porous texture, and consequently the grasses were higher and water might be found at a lesser depth. That improvement, I am told, continues as we go northward towards Salisbury, even though we may keep on a somewhat uniform level, that is on the tableland separating the river flowing eastward, south to the Limpopo and north-west to the Zambesi. So rapid is the effect of a lower altitude, and consequent greater heat and moisture, that about 80 miles from Bulawayo to the north-west a magnificent forest of teak has been found, from whose grand timber we saw several specimens of furniture, such as tables, desks, and bureaus, a log of 20 feet long and a foot square, besides a quantity of planks.
Rhodesia's Fine Climate.
Now, this Rhodesia consists of Matabeleland and Mashonaland, and covers about a quarter of a million square miles. It is the northern portion of the Great South African tableland, and its highest elevations run north-east and south-west, varying from 4000 to nearly 6000 feet above the sea. This height declines on the eastern, southern, and north-western sides, as it slopes along with the rivers flowing from them. This high land, which is eminently suitable for European families, is about 70,000 square miles in extent, of solid, unbroken agricultural country as compared with Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Those who remember what countries of similar superficial area in Europe can contain in population may be able to gauge what numbers of the white race may exist in Rhodesia. Outside the limit I have mentioned the resident must expect to be afflicted with malarial fevers, and the lower one descends towards the sea, the more frequent and severe will they become. There is this comfort, however, that long before the upper plateau is over-populated, population will have made a large portion of the malarious districts healthy and inhabitable-at least, it has been so found in every land that I have visited. On the upper lands, the resident who has come by way of the Cape and Bechuanaland need have no fear of malaria. I regard my own oft-tried system as a pretty sure indicator of the existence of malaria, for a very few hours' residence in a country subjected to this scourge would soon remind me of my predisposition to it; but during the whole of the time I have spent in Rhodesia I have not felt the slightest symptom. I have seen white women driving their babies in perambulators on the plain outside Bulawayo in a sun as hot as any in the Egyptian or Moroccan desert, and, though I felt they were unwise, it was clear to me that in such a climate a sufficient head protection was the only thing necessary to guard against a sunstroke or the feverish feeling which naturally follows a rash exposure to heat.
The Rainy Season.
Rhodesia has been visited by us during what is generally said to be its worst period. The rainy season begins in November and ends in March. We arrived November 4, and, though we have been here only a week, we have had four showers and one all-night downpour. The rainfall during the season amounts to as much as 45 inches. I fancy few men have had larger experience of the pernicious effects of cold rains alternating with hot suns than I, and the composure of the Bulawayo population under what seems to promise four months of such weather strikes my imagination, and is to me a strong testimony of the healthfulness of the climate.
No Stint of Vegetables.
The park of Bulawayo, the grounds of Government House, and especially the advanced state of Mr Colenbrander's charming gardens, afforded to me valuable proofs that the soil responded very readily to civilised treatment; but the most conclusive proof to me of the capacity of the soil was furnished by a large market garden laid out in a depression just outside of the town. From end to end the garden, supplied with water by a windpump from a well, was a mass of robust European vegetables, whence cabbages weighing 30 pounds each, and tomatoes of extraordinary size, have been sent to market. At the Palace Hotel the hundreds of guests made large demands for vegetables, and there was no stint of them. Further on towards old Gubulawayo we were attracted by native women hoeing in a field, and our attention was drawn to the native fields, which showed by the old corn-stalks that the Matabele must have found the black earth of the plains gracious to their toils. Here and there in these villa gardens, market gardens, public pleasaunces, and ornamental grounds we found sufficient evidences that, given water, the soil of Rhodesia was equal to supplying anything that civilised man with his fastidious taste and appetite could possibly demand.
The Gold of Rhodesia-Something to Satisfy an Anxious Mind.
The next thing to do was to find out something relating to the precious metal, whose presence in Rhodesia was the immediate cause of the railway. I remember last session having heard in the Smoking Room of the House of Commons the most disparaging views regarding the prospects of Rhodesia and the quality of the reefs. The gold of Rhodesia was said to be "pocket" gold, and that the ancients, whose presence long ago in this land is proved by the multitude of old workings and disused shafts, were too clever to have left any for us moderns. Not knowing how to controvert such statements, I had left them unanswered, half believing that they were true. Sir James Sivewright, in his speech on the first festal night, said that Bulawayo...
