in South Africa, the provision of the most ordinary elements of comfort is not possible, while exposure is inevitable; but with improvement in those conditions, gradually taking place, will come improved health. Speaking generally, I believe the health of settlers will be as good in our new colony as in nearly every other part of South Africa.

The greater portion of this high plateau will produce the fruits and vegetables of Northern Europe. It has been proved that wheat, oats, barley, and vegetables such as potatoes, onions, cauliflowers, cabbages, carrots, &c., can be grown successfully. The commission appointed by the Afrikander Bund to report on the agricultural prospects of Mashonaland expressed a high opinion of the value of the country situated between Forts Charter and Salisbury, and in the latter neighbourhood they found the land most suitable for agriculture. The region between Salisbury and Manika possesses large areas of valuable grazing-ground. Of the country lying between Fort Charter and Victoria, along the Pioneer road, they entertained a very poor opinion. It certainly is a most uninviting and inhospitable tract of country, and has doubtless largely influenced the adverse opinions expressed in some quarters by visitors who have seen nothing of Mashonaland except from the main road. People who have merely been to Salisbury, or thence to Manika along the highway, can have little conception of the vast extent of the high table-land and its agricultural capabilities. Large sections of Mashonaland, away from these main roads, embrace fine tracts of country.

A feature of Mashonaland deserving special attention is that when the long summer grass is burnt off-usually in June to August-there springs up a short, sweet herbage, on which cattle and horses thrive. During the months of September and October therefore, when the Transvaal and Bechuanaland are a scorched and arid waste and the cattle poor and miserable, the Mashonaland and Matabeleland valleys are everywhere green, the streams in full force, and the cattle in good condition. No one who has not been in the interior of South Africa, and at the end of the dry season, can realise the importance of this fact.

THE MODERN HISTORY OF MASHONALAND.

The modern history of Mashonaland and Matabeleland dates from the reign of Umziligazi—the father of Lo Bengula, the present King of the Matabele-who, pressed by the Boers moving north,

about the year 1840 overran Mashonaland and Matabeleland, conquering all the tribes in the highlands and ultimately settling and establishing the Matabele power in that section of the plateau now known as Matabeleland. Umziligazi attempted to carry out an extensive expedition north of the Zambesi, but unsuccessfully. On his return to Matabeleland he found that his eldest son, Kuruman, had been installed as king, the tribe believing Umziligazi dead. Kuruman was exiled and, it is believed, assassinated. In 1868 Umziligazi died and the heir, Lo Bengula, was invited but refused to reign; in 1870, however, he yielded to entreaty and was crowned king.

A graphic description of the recent history of Mashonaland is given by Mr. Selous ("Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa "), which accounts for the native tribes having abandoned some of their arts and industries and sunk into the spiritless people they are at this day. According to Mr. Selous:

These raids almost completely depopulated large tracts of country, and put an end to the gold-mining industry, which, there is no doubt, was still being carried on in the early part of this century. It also put a stop to the wall-building, as the Mashonas found out that the walls with which they had been accustomed to encircle their towns, and which were probably very often an effective means of defence against other tribes of their own race, were of little avail against the braver and betterorganised Zulus. Thus the high plateau of Mashonaland, which at no very distant date must have supported a large native population, once more became an almost uninhabited wilderness, as the remnants of the aboriginal tribes who escaped destruction at the hands of the Zulu invaders retreated into the broken country which encircles the plateau to the south and east. Had it not been for the constant destruction of the native races that has been going on in Mashonaland during the last seventy or eighty years, there would be no room for European immigration to-day.

HOTTENTOTS AND BUSHMEN.

Besides the two primitive races of South Africa found occupying the territories adjoining the Cape of Good Hope-the Hottentot and Bushmen-were the dark skinned negroids of the Bantu stock, speaking, according to Noble, "a euphonious, polysyllabic, prefix pronominal language; living under hereditary chiefs; pastoral and agricultural in their pursuits; dwellers in villages, and workers in metals. They are now known as the tribal groups, classed as Kafirs, Zulus, Makalakas, Bechuanas, and Damaras, all having ancient traditions of invasions, wars, and forays during their migra

tions southward and eastward from their long-forgotten home in the north and east."

The Hottentots were a nomadic people, comparatively rich, with abundant flocks and herds. The Bushmen were of a more diminutive stature, of spare, emaciated figure, dwelling in small communities in the recesses of the mountains or in the desert, living entirely by hunting and trapping. With their bow and arrow— this latter steeped in poison-they were the dread of the Hottentot. These two races are said by competent authorities to have been the original inhabitants of a great portion of the African continent, and to have sprung from one source.

The curious drawings of the Bushmen have attracted much attention, and are found at many points between the Cape and the Zambesi. They consist of representations of a mythological character connected with their customs and superstitions, animals and the human figure, coloured in clay and ochre. In Bechuanaland and Mashonaland I have seen examples of these drawings.

The term "Kafir," signifying "infidel," was applied by the Mohammedan Arabs to all the dark races of Africa, and adopted by the first Europeans coming into contact with the tribes on the Eastern border of the Cape Colony.

The Kafirs, to quote Noble ("Official Handbook of the Cape and South Africa "), are physically superior to the Hottentot race. They are generally fine, able-bodied men, reserved and self-possessed in manner, but courteous and polite, and sensible of kindness and consideration. Their form of government was a well-organised although simple one. They had a regular gradation of authority from the head of the family, who was responsible for its conduct, or the head of the kraal or village, who was responsible for the collective families therein, up to the chief, who, with his councillors, adjudicated in all matters relating to the affairs of individuals or of the tribe. They had a system of law which took cognisance of crimes and offences, enforced civil rights and obligations, provided for the validity of polygamic marriages, and secured succession to property according to well-defined rules. Superstition entered into all the affairs of their life, and formed part of their laws, customs, and religion. They believed in benevolent and evil spirits producing prosperity or adversity in health or sickness, and witchcraft was recognised as one of the evil arts practised with the view of causing death or injury to property. The alleged offender, charged with being umtakati (wizard or witch), was stripped of his possessions, and, after being subjected to various kinds of torture, was frequently put to death. The procedure supplied a convenient method of getting rid of any obnoxious persons, or one whose property was coveted.

NATIVE RACES.

The various tribes now known as Mashonas, living principally in the hills to the north-east, east, and south-east of the high open plateau-the remnant that has escaped the process of gradual extinction at the hands of the Matabele-do not call themselves Mashonas, and no one, not even Mr. Selous, is able to suggest how this name arose. It is useful, however, as a generic term designating the various aboriginal tribes speaking dialects of one language. Each community has its own tribal name-such as Bambiri, Mabotcha, Barotse, &c. The tatoo marks differ in each clan. According to Mr. Selous the distinguishing mark of the Barotse living on the Upper Sabi is a broad open nick filed out between the two front teeth of the upper jaw, the tribal mark of the Barotse now existing on the Upper Zambesi. In Mr. Selous' opinion it is not at all impossible, or indeed improbable, that the Zambesi Barotse were originally an offshoot from the powerful Barotse nation that once occupied a large tract of country to the west of the Sabi River in Southern Mashonaland, until in the latter days of Umziligazi they were broken up by a Matabele impi, and only a small number left, who settled in the valleys concealed among the hills east of the Sabi. They seem always to have been a mild and gentle people, and a long course of savage oppression at the hands of the Matabele left them with all the spirit crushed out of them, such as we found them when we entered Mashonaland in 1890.

Concerning the native races now found scattered over a large extent of Mashonaland and the ruined and ancient gold workings, Mr. Selous is of opinion that they are descended from a commercial people who some 3,000 years ago penetrated from Southern Arabia to Mashonaland, bringing but few women with them. They were thus driven to intermarry among the aboriginal tribes, and in course of time became completely fused with them, and nationally lost.

For information regarding the important subject of the ruins of Mashonaland, the investigation of which will aid in throwing light on the past history of the country and its ancient gold-mining, I would refer the reader to the interesting works of Mr. Theodore Bent and Dr. Schlichter.

THE MATABELE ORGANISATION.

The Matabele nation, which is more a military organisation than a tribe, though Zulu in origin, language, customs, and methods of warfare, has greatly degenerated from the original Zulu stock by

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the incorporation of the inferior tribes they have raided and conquered from time to time. They live under a military despotism presided over by the King, who is absolute master of everything There are no industries, the tribesmen living mainly by the assegai and the cattle captured on raids. On these expeditions or forays the men and old women are massacred, the children and young women being carried away, and marked, as Matabele, by a hole made with an assegai in the lobe of the ear. The lads grow up Matabele, and in time become soldiers, the girls being taken as wives by their captors. The result has been a race originally Zulu, intermixed with Bechuanas, Mashonas, Makalakas, &c., held together only by a military bondage and organisation. Thus degenerated, they are living largely upon the prestige and power of their progenitors, the famous Umziligazi (Lo Bengula's father) and his warrior-followers. The number of fighting men is estimated at fifteen to twenty thousand. The whole fabric may be easily shaken or broken.1

THE KING OF THE MATABEle.

The King is not only master of everything and everyone throughout his territories, but a terror to all his neighbours. Like other absolute monarchs, his power is maintained by the military, and only with their approval, and he has to be very cautious, as stated elsewhere, how he deals with them. Present and past history, both in the East and West, furnish numerous parallels to the case of the Matabele King, such as many of the Amirs of Afghanistan and the Roman Emperors. There are many analogies between the rulers of Afghanistan and Lo Bengula, though it must be acknowledged that the African potentate is an utterly uncivilised edition of the Afghan monarch. The Amir has to control and conciliate his various chiefs at the head of fighting clans, for whose energies there is at present no other outlet than war. Lo Bengula, as elsewhere shown, has to repress the war cravings of his "matjaka." The Amir has to reckon with the fanatical Mullah or Ghazi; Lo Bengula with his wizards and medicine-men. The turn which events have taken is unfortunate for Lo Bengula, who was beginning to appreciate the advantages of a settled life; but the "matjaka" have got the upper hand and forced upon him a war which has proved disastrous for him. Men in his position have not infrequently to pay heavy penalties for their exalted rank.

Recent events have fully confirmed this view