A BOOK OF THE DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2086, 15 February 1894, Page 40

A BOOK OF THE DAY.

SELOUS ON MASHUNALAND.

No book of travel I have read since I gave my heart aa a boy to Paul dv Ohaillu has impressed me like " Travel and Adventure in South-east Africa," by F. C. Selous. It is what is called " a rattling good book," not only dealing with matter of exceptional interest at first band, but having its information conveyed in pleasant, graceful style, not too much at a time, and its adventures told with inimitable "go." In the aftertime the fair Mashunaland province of our South African Dominion, with its gold mines yielding to Anglo-Colonial mining skill the treasures only dreamed of by Arabs and Portuguese from the days of the Queen of Sheba, and its lofty downs, browsed by millions of highly-bred sheep, will hail Frederick Courtenay Selous as its pater patrue. Through long years he roamed from end to end of it, the mightiest hunter of South Africa; it was he who, by his entreaties to Mr Cecil Rhodes, the " Sir John Macdonald of the Cape," and his urgent letters to The Times and The Manchester Guardian, brought about the assumption of Mashunaland by the South African Company, just as the Portuguese were about to seize it for tbeir villainous praco system of disguised slavery. It was he who guided the pioneer expedition which colonised the country ; he who cut the very roads over which the expedition passed. There is no lack of marvels in Mr Selous's book. Now we gape at the magnificent stone ruins of a perished and forgotten civilisation, now at hair-breadth escapes from lion or elephant, We are transported to a new atmosphere, with bo much of the staryteller's art tbat we feel as if we ourselves are inspsnning and outspanning, off-saddlibg and off-loading in the South African Veld, wondering if there is any water left in the vleys by the last rains, losing everything we possess by a vicious hippopotamus tossing our canoe, tr having onr best ox carried off by a lion under our very noses on a black night, or flying for our own Hves from a treacherous attack by the Mashukulumbwi on another such night. When I first met Mr Selous he was in full evening dress, taking part at a smart supper at the Maison Doree ; but it did not disguise the man, holding his tall, wiry, loosely-built figure erect as a savage, and with the combination of coolness and reckless courage written in every line of his high-cheek-boned face, with its tip-tilted nose, insouciant light blue eyes, and bleached beard telling of years under a tropical sun. Mr Seloua confirms the colonial opinion of THE HOPELESS VULGARITY OF THE NATIVE. I do not think that the natives of South-east Africa who have been accustomed to the Portuguese like working for Englishmen; we are too energetic for them. Many of my countrymen believe that the natives despise the Portuguese, and admire the superior strength and energy of North Europeans ; but I think there is a good deal of misconception in this matter. Doubtless the descendants of the brave and warlike tribes of Zulu stock despise effeminacy and admire manliness ; but it is my opinion that the more mean-spirited and cowardly tribes reverence nothing but wealth, and when they see an Englishman, Scotsman, German, or Swede — for all northern Europeans I have observed have the same pride of a dominant race, that forbids them to show any sign of effeminacy before an inferior people — walking in the hot sun bare-armed, and often barelegged, carrying his own rifle and running after game, they think he only does so because he is poor, and cannot afford to pay men to hunt for him, and porters to carry him in a palanquin, sheltered from the heat of the sun by an awning or an umbrella, and they despise him accordingly, and contrast him unfavourably with the more effeminate and luxurious Portuguese, whom they respect more than the Englishman, because they think he is rich enough to afford comforts which the latter cannot command. There are not many humorous touches in the book. Lobengula's demand of a " salted horse" for the right to hunt in Mashunaland refers not to naval stores, but to the animal having already got over the disease of the country. SALTED HORSE. The two forms of horse sickness prevalent in South Africa are [known [as the " Din-2/iekte and the Dik-Kopziekte" (thinsickness and thickhead sickness). The former is more prevalent than the latter in Griqualand, the 3outh-western Transvaal, and in Southern Bechwanaland, whereas farther north the thick-head type, in which the head swells, is the common form. The latter is the more deadly of the two, and should a horse contract it and recover from it he is thoroughly •' salted," and you need have no fear of his contracting the milder disease. On the other hand, should a horse be " salted " only for the "thin sickness," and you take bim to the northern Transvaal or to the counties north of that State, he will very likely contract the thick-.head sickness, to which he will probably succumb. A good " salted horse " is worth £60 in money. It is worth anything in the bush. When Mr Selous fell in with a larger herd of elephant than he believed to be in existence, some 200, the only horse he had available had the curious but almost fatal failing of not beicg afraid of elephants; nothing would induce him to hurry when pursued by a wounded elephant, so the only thing for Mr Selous to do was to slip off and leave him to bis fate : NOT AFRAID OF ELEPHANTS. The forest was very open about here, and she saw me as soon as I saw her, and raising her head and spreading her ears, charged forthwith, screaming loudly. Turning my horse I galloped back for the rocks, but the stallion would not put out any pace, and I could tell from the screams that the elephant was gaining rapidly upon me. Hastily turning my head, I saw she was getting very near, and knew she would soon catch me ; so I resolved to dismount and run for the recks. My stallion was in some respects a perfect shooting horse, and immediately I leant forward and seized his mane he stopped dead. I was .off and in front of him in an instant, and running for the rocks, which were not 20yds away. As I got round the first rock I turned, aud this is what I saw. The horse was standing absolutely still, with his head up and his four feet planted firmly in the ground as if carved in stone, and the elephant, which had then ceased to ecream, and was making a

curious rumbling noise, was standing alongside of him, smelling about her with her trunk. In front of my saddle was tied a leather coat with a red flannel lining — a present the preceding year from my friend, poor Montague Kerr— and I suppose that the elephant must have touched the horse with her trunk, as he suddenly gave a jump round, throwing the redlined coat into the air. He then walked slowly to the rocky ridge behind him, and again stood still about 15yds away from the elephant. All this time I bad been afraid to fire, for fear of exasperating the elephant, and causing it to kill my horse. I now, however, determined to do so, and was thinking of firing for her brain, for she was very near me, when she raised her head and eais and came towards the rocks screamiDg like a railway engine. She must have got my wind, I fancy, suddenly. However, " she could not get at me without going round the other rocks ; and as she did so, she gave me a splendid chance at a distance of not more than 15yds. I fired into the centre of her shoulder, and immediately the bullet struck her she stopped screaming, and, dropping her ears, swerved off. She only ran a hundred yards or so, and then fell over dead, shot through the large bloodvessels of the upper part of the heart. At another time it was a lion that almost settled him. A NAItBOW "SUAVE" FROM A LION. However, there was no time to wait, and trying to aim so that the bullet should just clear the fallen log and catch him between the eyes, I fired. With a loud roar he answered the shot. I instantly became aware that he was coming straight at me with open mouth and flaming eyes, growling savagely. I knew it was hopeless to try and get another cartridge into my single-barrelled rifle, and utterly useless to try and mount, more especially as my horse, startled by the loud, hoarse grunts, and sudden and disagreeable appearance of the charging lion, backed bo vigorously that the bridle (to a running ring on which a strong thong was attached, the other end being fastened to my belt) came over his head. I had a strong feeling that I was about to have an opportunity of testing the accuracy of Doctor Livingstone's incredible Statement that, for certain reasons (explained by the doctor), a lion's bite gives no pain ; but there was no time to think of anything in particular. The whole adventure was the affair of a moment. I jußt brought my rifle round in front of me, holding the small of the stock in^my right hand and the barrel in my left, with a vague idea of getting it into the lion's mouth, and at the same time yelled out as loud as I could, " Loos de honden, loos de honden ! " which being translated means, " Let loose the dogs." Iv au instant, as I say, the lion was close up to me. I had never moved my feet since firing, and whether it was my standing still faoing him tbat made him alter his mind, or whether he heard the noise made by my people, who, hearirig my shot, immediately followed by the growling of the lion, were all shouting and making a noise to frighten the lion from coming their way, I cannot take upon myself to gay ; but he came straight on to within about 6yds of me, looking, I must say, most unpleasant, and then suddenly swerved off, and, passing me, galloped away. Mr Selous rehabilitates the terrible character of the lion for daring ; on a dark night nothing can exceed its audacity. He and Mr Jameson had built a ehelter of boughs to watch the body of an ox killed by a troop of lions on the preceding night in the hopes of getting a shot. The night was too black for them to see anything, though they were but 10yds off. But the lions saved them the trouble by trying to get at them ; thus three were killed which came right up to the muzzles of the guns. Once, when he had no cartridges, Mr Selous was ohased by a couple of lions in broad daylight ; he rode as fast as he could gallop, and at last they left him and lay down. landseeb's lions. They lay almost exactly in the position of Landseer's lions in Trafalgar square, and it is quite a mistake to say that that great artist has made an error in representing lions lying with forepaws straight like a dog. When on the alert a lion always lies like this, and only bends his paws inwards like a cat when resting thoroughly at his ease. Mr Selous has neither fear nor love for Lobengula. Speaking of a horse he owned, j he says : He, however, turned out hopelessly bad, and is the only really vicious horse I have ever had anything to do with in South Africa. I almost cared him of bucking by riding him with an adze handle, and stunning him with a heavy blow administered between the ears as soon as he commenced, which he invariably did as soon as one touohed the saddle ; but I never could make a shooting horse of him, and finally gave him to Lobengula, in the hope that he would present him to a Ma-kwaykwi, or some other of his endunas against whom I had a personal grudge. Lobengula loves his hippopotami as King William I loved his red deer. Strictly against Mr Selous's orders, one of his men killed one for the meat. Lobengula summoned him to his kraal : lobengula's hippopotami. I said, " John is my man ; he has shot a seacow ; if he has committed a fault I will take it on myself." He afc once said, "Do you say that because you are rich ? " and got very angry, as did all his endunas, when I told him that I did not say it because I was rich, but because I was one man alone in his country, and saw that he wanted to "tumba" — i.e., to plunder ma. After remaining silent, drumming with his foot, and looking very black for a few moments, he eaid, " You say you will pay ; what will you pay ? " I said I would give him two heifers for the sea-cow John h*d shot, when he immediately said in a very angry tone of voice, and holding up and shaking both hands in the air with all the fingers extended, "You shall pay 10." I said, "You can take them ; you are strong, and lam alone, but I ( won't give them." No one need sentimentalise over the lights of the Matabcle in Mashunalanrt. They have | none. A huadred years ago the country was full of peaceful, prosperous, industrious Mashunas, but during the lust three generations they have been so raided by tbe Zulus (of whom the Matabele are a branch) that but for the British occupation they would be exterminated in a few years. Far from dispossessing anyone, we are actually saving the lives of the rightful owners. Mr Selous Bays : MATAHELE AND 3IASH.UNA. On the summit of every hill may ba found the walls, in more or less perfect preservation, of what I thiuk must have been kraals. These walls are very neatly built of squared stones, nicely fitted together, but uncemented with any kind of mortar. The peaceful people inhabiting this part of Africa muet have been in the zenith of their prosperity. Herds of their small but beautiful cattle lowed in every valley, and their

rich and fertile counbry doubtless afforded them an abundance of vegetable food. Aboub 1840, however, tbe Matabele Zulus, under their warlike chief Umziligazi, settled in the country which they now iuhabit, and very soon bands of these ferocious and blood-thirsty savages overran the peaceful vales of the Mashuna country in every direction. The poor Mashunaa, unskilled in war, and living, moreover, in small communities scattered all over the country, without any general government, fell an easy prey before the fierce invaders, and very soon ever stream in the country ran red with their blood, whilst vultures and hycenas feasted undisturbed amidst the ruins of their devastated homes. Their cattle, sheep, and goats were driven off by their conquerors, and their children, when old enough to walk, and not above 10 years or 12 years of age, were taken for slaves ; the little children too young to walk were, of course, killed together with their mothers. In a very few years there will be no more Mashunas left in the open country, the remnant that had eecaped masaacre having fled into the mountainous districts to the south and east of their former dwellings, where they still live. Thus in a shorb time an immense exbent of fertile country thab had, perhaps, for ages pasb supported a large and thriving community, was again given back to Nature; and so it remains bo the present day — an übterly uninhabited country, roamed over at will by herds of elands and other antelopes. This, then, is Mashunaland. Glencoe massacres are qoite a popular amusement with the Matabele. Mr Selous sees no impassable gulf fixed between the people living in Mashunaland to-day and the builders of Zimbabwi, the wonderful temple described by Mr Theodore Bent. PREHISTORIC RUINS OF ZIMBABWI. Many things tend to prove that the ancient builders of Zimbabwi were a rude people. They had a religion, [and possessed sufficient energy and concentration of purpose bo carry bo the end the immense work of building the Temple of Zimbabwi. But the work itself, though very wonderful, appears to me to be rude and unsymmetrical. Nowhere is the wall absolutely plumb, and on the top it varies in different parbs considerably in breadth. The facb thab no written characters have been found on any of the flat granite or soapsbone beams embedded in bhe walls, or bhe large flat stones standing upright like tombstones in the floor of the Zimbabwi, seems to me to prove that the people who built this temple were unacquainted with writing of any kind. The only carvings on the eides of the soapsbone beams are lozengeshaped and herring-bone patterns (badly carved, nob a single line being quite straight). The present inhabitants are a Bantu race, and Mr Selous considers they have an admixture of foreign blood, probably Arab, from their lighter colour and finer features. The little personal sketches introduced into the book remind one of Clarendon's " History of the Rebellion." Take, for instance, this comment on Mr Rhodes's asking Dr Jameson to take over the arduous and difficult duties of administration of Mashunaland : THE COMMANDER OF MASHUNALAND. Dr Jameson has endeared himself bo all classes of bhe communiby by his tacb and good temper, and has managed all the diverse details connected with the administration of a new country with a correebness of judgmenb which amounts to nothing less than genius, and genius of a most rare and versatile order. He was the man for bhe position. No other, taken all round, could have been quite what Dr Jameson has been as administrator of Mashunaland in its early days. The author pays tributes to Darwin and Thackeray : MOUNTS DARWIN AND THACKERAY. I had what some people call the impertinence to name ib Mount Darwin, after that illustrious Englishman, whose far-reachiDg theories — logical conclusions based upon an enormous mass of incontrovertible facts — have revolutionised modern thought, and destroyed for ever many old beliefs that held men's minds in thrall for centuries. . . . A few hundred yards from ETandaya's village stood a high and conspicuous cone-shaped hill called by the natives Tchakari. This name I altered to Mount Thackeray, as a tribute bo the memory of bhe immortal novelist, whose genius has so often enabled me bo escape for bhe time being from my surroundings, to forget the filthy, soulless, sordid, mean, and verminswarming savages, amongst whom I actually was, and to live again, in spirit at least, amongst the dwellers in " Vanity Fair." It is pleasant to picture Mr Selous reading his Darwin and Thackeray in tbe midst of the African desert, just as one is glad to find the mighty hunter a philologist and well posted in the historical geography of Africa. Space forbids me giving his thrilling escape from the Mashukulumbwi, who stormed his camp at night. I must give one paragraph : SELOUS'S NARROWEST ESCAPE. I turned quickly round to clutch my rifle, bub was boo late, for bhe man whom I had heard just Btooped and seized ib before my own hand touched ib, and, never pausing, rushed off with it and disappeared in the darkness. I sprang up, and at bhe same moment one of the two men who had engaged me in conversation did so too, and in the act of rising dropped some dry grasp, which he had hitherto concealed beneath bis large ox-hide rag, on to the fire. There was at once a blaze of light, which lit up the whole of the space round the fire. My eyes instinctively looked towards the hut which I had seen the man with the gun enter, and there, sure enough, he sat in the door, taking aim at me nob 10yds from where I stood. There was no time to remonstrate. I sprang out into the darkness, seiziDg one of the pieces of wildebeest meat as I did so, and as the village was surrounded wibh long grass pursuib would have been hopeless, and was nob attempted. My would-be assassin never got off his shot. We should like to draw Mr Labouchere's attention to the Portuguese "PBACO" SYSTEM. Although the native population of the Portuguese possessions on the banks of the Lower Zambesi may nob be slaves, they certainly do not seem to be free men in the English sense of the word. The country is divided into pracos or districts, each praco being let by Government to some person, usually a European or a Goanese, for a certain annual rental. The person who reuts such a praco naturally tries to make the best of his bargain, and get as much as he can out of his people ; and the inhabitants practically become his serfs, and cannob leave the praco without his consent. There may be laws in force in the more civilised distriebs which tend to mitigate the abuses bo which such a system is open, but that the powers derived from Government are shamefully abused in the outlying districts I cau myself bear witness. I should have liked to allude to such topics as the disappearance of the gigantic white rhinoceros ; the richness of hippopotamus

soup ; the slaughter of five dogs by a mortally- wounded antelope ; the ship's boiler, in which Mr Selous prepared his skeletons, regarded by the natives as a kind of soup kitchen ; the finding of waggon ruts in thesand three years after they had been made ; the rat that weighed 101b ; the marvellous tracking instinct of the " Bushmen," who are not pigmies after all ; the freshwater sharks of the Zambesi ; the scentlessness of the ground flowers in Mashunaland (as in Australia) ; Mr Selous's accidents, including the piece of wood which went into bis eye and came out down his nose ; the supernatural hjrena that haunted the camp tbe night Mr French died in the bush ; the cannibal lion ; the brilliant capture of tbe Portuguese Colonel Andrada, and the march to take possession of Mashunaland. Bat space absolutely prohibits.

Mr Rowland Ward's get-up of the book is worthy of its contents — paper, printing, and pictures are alike admirable. — Douglas Sladen, in Literarj World.