vast majority of the ex-burghers have not the slightest intention of ever parting with money in payment for these rations. The chairmen of the Repatriation Commissions in every district I visited were anxious for the immediate establishment of relief works so that they could put the able-bodied to work on railway construction, road-making, and so forth, instead of demoralising the men by the distribution of free food. It was full time, too, that the system by which cattle, implements, &c., were being sold to the farmers at cost price, at two years' credit, free of interest, should be discontinued. It will be found that the repatriation of the ex-burghers has cost the British taxpayer far more than was originally intended. The Transvaal Government decided to stop the distribution of free rations and the sales on credit at the end of April. In districts where, owing to the failure of crops or other causes, men who are able to work cannot obtain the necessaries of life, it undertook to begin certain public works, on which employment would be given to those willing to avail themselves of it. Men so employed and their families would be allowed to purchase rations at the repatriation depôts.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE

GREAT NORTHERN ROAD-THE BUSH VELDT-THE PIONEERS OF RHODESIA-BULAWAYO-REMINISCENCES OF RHODESIA IN THE EARLY DAYS RAILWAY COMMUNICATION-RESOURCES OF RHODESIA-REASONS FOR ITS TARDY DEVELOPMENT-A SUCCESSION OF DISASTERS-FUTURE PROSPERITY-PROGRESS UP TILL NOW-CRITICS OF THE CHARTERED COMPANY-NEEDS OF RHODESIA-THE LABOUR QUESTION IN RHODESIA.

A THIRTY-FOUR hours' railway journey brought me from Mafeking to Bulawayo. That long travel northwards through the interminable bush veldt awoke many memories. Ten years ago, before the railway from the Cape had been extended to Mafeking, I occupied three months in trekking with an ox-waggon to Bulawayo in the rainy season, for slow was our progress through the deep sloughs which we frequently encountered. But now in this season of almost unprecedented drought the train crossed dry river-beds where formerly the swollen streams had held us up for days at a time. Now all the long grass was burnt up and yellow, though the country for the most part still presented a verdant appearance, so densely in some places grew various evergreen trees and shrubs of the bush veldt. For 500 miles the train traversed an almost level country, and I was astonished to find how uninteresting and monotonous it appeared, for when trekking through this wilderness I had found it quite otherwise. It is nearly always thus when a country is surveyed from a railway carriage. All the interest and romance of it seems to have vanished. The man who has looked on a land

the

X

only from a train knows nothing of it; even as he knows nothing of the ocean who has gazed on heaving seas and wild skies only from the high deck of the huge liner. The majesty and terror of the ocean can only be realised by one who has navigated it in smaller craft, when one is so much nearer the angry water and when the crests of the waves tower high above one's low decks. So, when trekking through the bush, a man is in close touch with the free wild nature-the plants and flowers and the manifold life of beasts, birds, and reptiles. By day and by night he feels the fascination of the wilderness, and the horror of it, too, if the traveller happens to get lost in it, which can be easily done within a stone's throw of one's waggon where the bush is thick.

Many a romantic story could be told of that long waggon road to the north. Matabeleland was being conquered as I trekked up to it. The rumours of the richness of the new Eldorado had fired the souls of the adventurers of the world. All along that desert track the men of the legion that never was listed' were straggling up, the majority on foot. During the outspans men of strange pasts came up to one's waggon to ask for foodnever in vain, for in the South African, as in other wilds on the frontiers of the Empire, to succour the white man in need, whatever be his character, is recognised to be as sacred and inviolable a duty as is hospitality with the Arab of the desert. Yet many men died of hunger and thirst and fever on their way to that Promised Land. The day that I came to the little camp of native huts and tattered tents, where now stands the City of Bulawayo, the body of a young Scotsman, which had been found under a tree not three miles off, was brought in. He had travelled all the way from Glasgow,

to die when he had thus all but reached his goal. At that time the Chartered Company found itself compelled to issue a great quantity of free rations to the destitute white men who flocked into the country.

6

That was in 1893. Great, indeed, have been the changes since then, for now I found myself travelling by train to a spacious civilised city that bears the old name of the savage kraal which we here captured and destroyed-Bulawayo, the place of the killing.' And this, moreover, was certainly the most comfortable railway journey I have ever experienced in South Africa. To begin with, I had a compartment to myself, for the trains to Rhodesia are not unpleasantly crowded, as is often the case with those that run to Johannesburg. Again, there is no scramble for meals at the station dining-rooms, the stoppages allowing the traveller plenty of time. The food provided, too, is far better than that supplied at the railway stations on the Cape lines, though the caterer is the same. Lastly, when the traveller reaches his destination he finds in the 'Grand' an hotel which, I think, deservedly enjoys the reputation of being the best in South Africa.

The train passed a milestone on the line indicating that we were now 1,360 miles from Capetown, and a few minutes later we were at Bulawayo. When I was last here a handful of white men occupied a temporary encampment lying under the shelter of a little fort, for the menace of the Matabele raids was then still with us. But now I was brought to a large railway station, had to pass my baggage through a Custom House, took a cab and drove through broad streets lighted by means of electricity, and lined with avenues of young trees, to a first-class hotel, where turbaned white-robed Indians waited on one in their usual admirable silent fashion,

so that the traveller could have imagined himself to be in one of our luxurious hostelries in the Far East.

Bulawayo looks like the skeleton of a magnificent city. Round the spacious market-square the streets cut each other at right angles, running from north to south and from east to west. But, save in two or three of the principal streets, the buildings, many of which are strikingly handsome, are so scattered over the vast framework of the city that is to be, that the visitor does not at first realise how large the township really is and how considerable is the number of white people collected here. There are great gaps between the buildings, and the growth of the wild veldt creeps into these from outside, filling the open spaces with bush and grass. Stately public edifices seem to be rising out of the unreclaimed wilderness. If from the centre of the town one looks to the north, west, or south, down the straight streets, they nearly all appear to end abruptly in the parched wastes of the veldt; but eastward the view is bounded by the pleasant suburbs that cover the higher ground beyond the spruit. Here the pretty red-roofed bungalows of the wealthier citizens are scattered among a wild boscage of dark green, many of the structures standing amid delightful gardens, where, by the side of gorgeously blossoming sub-tropical plants, our oldfashioned British flowers-sunflowers, foxgloves, pinks, stocks, pansies, snapdragons, and the rest—thrive wonderfully on the alien soil, blooming more luxuriantly than they do at home.

When the visitor looks down on Bulawayo from the top of a high building he can form an idea of what a handsome city it is likely one day to become. The colouring of the town is remarkably pleasing to the eye, for it is a place of rich and delicate tints of red and