elevation varying from 4000 to upwards of 5000 feet, in a north-easterly direction from Buluwayo to Umtali, and forms the watershed of the Zambesi on the north, and the Sabi and Limpopo on the south. It is here in the uplands of Matabeleland and Mashonaland that the political and social interest, the colonising interest in fact, centres.

Northward our attention is attracted by the Zambesi, a river second only to the Nile among the rivers of Africa in geographical significance.

The interest of the Zambesi culminates in the Victoria Falls. Here, at a point midway in its eastward course, when its stream is more than a mile broad and its waters so placid that they assume the appearance of a lake, the Zambesi encounters a strange obstacle. A rockbound channel, 400 feet deep and 300 feet wide, stretches across the whole breadth of its stream and then doubles sharply backwards, leaving a wedge-shaped platform of rock level with the surface of the upper waters. Into this channel the Zambesi flings its waters down the perpendicular wall of rock. The effects which accompany this physical tour de force-the thunderous noise with which the waters fall over the precipice and crash together in the narrow channel; the chromatic brilliancy of the play of sunlight upon spray-clouds; the glimpses of the island-studded palm-fringed river seen through the shifting curtain of mist at dawn or sunrise, when every chromatic value is raised to a point of brilliancy reached only during the rapid approach or rapid withdrawal of the tropical sun-can be imagined but not described.

The regions in which the historic interest centres lie eastward of the Mashonaland plateau. The venerable ruins on the Lunde River and at Zimbabwe record the scene of the Semitic colonisation undertaken, probably under Phoenician auspices, in the era of King Solomon.

Its object was, of course, commercial: to work the gold mines, to trade with the natives in ivory and ostrich feathers. The ruins of the temple-fortress of Zimbabwe lie 20 miles east of Fort Victoria. The methods of building, the scientific and religious motives of the architectural design, clearly indicate the presence of a race superior in civilisation to any native African people. This superior race is identified by Mr Theodore Bent with the Sabeaans,* and their sphere of operations with the Ophir of the Bible.

On the coast, in a line due east from Zimbabwe is Sofala, the first point of Africa south of the Equator occupied by the Europeans. These earliest European colonists. were the Portuguese; but here in Africa, as in India, they had been forestalled by the Arabian merchants. In 1497 Vasco da Gama, in the course of his voyage to India, found Arab traders established on the east coast of Africa; and when, in 1505, Alvarez occupied Sofala, it is mentioned that two Arab dhows were lying there ladened with gold.f

The existence of the Zimbabwe ruins was known to the Portuguese, and the district in which they were situated was termed Monomotapa, but in Mr Bent's opinion the Portuguese themselves never penetrated so far inland, and their information was based upon the reports of the Moorish traders. The first European who saw the Zimbabwe ruins was the German explorer, Karl Mauch. The discovery took place in 1871, but, unfortunately, he maintained that "the fortress on the hill was a copy of King Solomon's Temple on Mount Moriah, that the lower ruins were a copy of the palace which the Queen of Sheba inhabited during her stay at Jerusalem, and that the trees in the middle of it were undoubtedly almug trees." Karl Mauch

* "Ruined Cities of Mashonaland,” p. 195.

+ Idem. pp. 196-7.

+ Idem. p. 209.

suffered for his enthusiasm. His picturesque statements excited incredulity and the work of scientific exploration was delayed for twenty years, when it was undertaken by Mr Theodore Bent under the joint auspices of two * London societies and the Chartered Company.

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The original inhabitants of the Mashonaland plateau are a tribe of industrial Bantu. The Mashonas are without military organisation, live in open villages, and have made some progress in the arts. Interesting evidence of the character of these people is afforded by a description of a visit to one of their villages which was lately read by Mr Frank Surridge at a meeting of the Colonial Institute.† Mr Surridge was chaplain to the pioneer force which occupied the country in 1890; and his account, therefore, is valuable, because he describes the people while they were still untouched by European civilisation. He tells us that the inhabitants of the village fled on the appearance of “a white stranger with a huge camera and tripod," and that he was left in possession of the chief's kraal. He continues, "Moving about through the quaint little houses, we may see signs of their industry. There stands the smith's forge, of a very primitive type of their own designing, but sufficient to produce some splendidly finished specimens in wrought iron, such as assagais, reaping implements, and knives. At another place may be seen the miniature arsenal, where the native men had been occupied in the manufacture of their own gunpowder. Another man may be bestowing some time and labour in carving a charm in ivory or a pillow in wood. Others may be occupied in cotton-spinning or mat-making. And last, but not least, there might be seen the native brewer labouring at his trade, and producing what is generally known as Dtchuala, or beer very small in character. Around the village there is some agricultural

* The Royal Geographical and the British Society for the advancement of Science. Mr R. Swan was associated with Mr Bent. + Reports, vol. xxii. p. 462 (July 1891).

land; the women are the labourers, and gather in their harvests of corn, rice, tobacco, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and monkey nuts."

But the plateau is not exclusively occupied by the Mashonas. The southern portion is in possession of a very different people, the Matabele. The Matabele Zulus, it will be remembered, retired northwards beyond the Limpopo, after the defeat of Moselekatse by the Boers under Hendrik Potgeiter. Shortly after that event, about the year 1840 according to Mr Selous, this warlike people, under Umziligazi, the son of Moselekatse and father of Lobengula, overran Mashonaland. Following the usual methods of the military Bantu, they exterminated the inhabitants of that portion of the country which they selected for occupation, and reduced the survivors to slavery or vassalage. Since this conquest to the date of Lobengula's death the Matabele king has maintained his supremacy over his Mashona subjects by sending his impis among them once a year for the purpose of indiscriminate murder and plunder. It was an interference with this native custom that caused the outbreak of hostilities between Lobengula and the Company. (Note 28.)

Such, then, in brief outline, are the characteristic features of Charterland.

The Mashonaland plateau, the immediate objective of the Company, was known from the accounts of hunters and explorers and these accounts have since been verifiedto be temperate in climate, well-watered, and well-wooded. It was a country where, to use Mr Selous' words written originally in 1883, "European children would grow up with rosy cheeks, and apples would not be flavourless." * There was also presumptive evidence of the presence of gold in the remains of ancient workings which had been discovered, and in the practice of the natives who were known to obtain alluvial gold by primitive methods from the Mazoe and its * "Travel and Adventure," p. 79 and note.

tributary streams. To-day the gold resources of Mashonaland are broadly stated to consist of 2.000 miles of mineralised quartz,' "* and in addition to gold the existence of ample deposits of coal and iron in juxtaposition has been ascertained.

The occupation of this country might legitimately have been undertaken by the Imperial Government; for is not England both the paramount power in South Africa, and the greatest colonising nation in the world? As a matter of fact, this obvious and salutary task was left to be accomplished by private enterprise, we might almost say by a single individual.

The acquisition of the interior of South-Central Africa by Mr Cecil Rhodes and his associates is probably the most successful application of the resources of civilisation to a commercial enterprise yet placed on record.

A mere narrative of the successive steps by which the occupation has been accomplished is sufficiently impressive.

By a proclamation of the High Commissioner of March 23rd, 1885, the 22nd parallel of south latitude was fixed as the northern boundary of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and the British sphere of influence was shortly afterwards extended northwards to the Zambesi. By thus fixing the boundary of the Protectorate it was supposed that the northward expansion of the South African Republic would be checked, for a band of red was placed between the Transvaal border and the interior of Africa. Notwithstanding this precautionary measure, it became known in 1887 that the Boers contemplated the establishment of a northern colony. Fortunately the Boers were watched by vigilant eyes in the Cape Colony, and this forward movement was anticipated by the conclusion of a treaty of "peace and amity" between Great Britain and Lobengula. Under the terms of this treaty, which was