SOME RHODESIAN HISTORY.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 22, Issue 91, 24 November 1911, Page 2

SOME RHODESIAN HISTORY.

'“THE WILSON PATROL.”

Sitting in the •‘bird cage” verandah of the comfortable club in BuUiwayo, looking out over the blossoms of the Bougainvillea at the statue of Cecil Rhodes, who stands at the cross-ways iw bis sack coat with Us hands joined behind him, while the southerly breeze, makes the Union Jack on the hotel fly out against the clear blue sky, it la difficult to, persuade oneself that only seventeen years ago Jameson and Forbes marched into the place with thstr little Colonial army. It is a wonderful story, the story of the short campaign. Few finer things have been done by Englishmen. Think’ of it—seven hundred men marching straight to the capital of a famous chief, master of many thousands of well-trained a Q d hitherto unbeaten warriors ; sustaining and repelling two fierce attacks ; finally driving him away into the forest, with the relics of his shattered regiment* about him, shattered but still outnumbering them • by ten to one. And .when the “Wilson Patrol,” thirty-five in all, many of them English public school boys, young still but hardened by some years of Colonial life, led by the Scotchman Alan Wilson, riding into the midst of the enemy, with the night coming on, to take the king in his own camp. They failed, and one of the best of South African writers has told us, In the • words ol the Matabele, how they fought their last fight—how, “when only five or six of the thirtyfive were ,left, they took off their hats, and under fire from all sides sang something as the English do, standing up and then went on fighting. And how at last only one man was left, one man bigger than the rest, who wore a broad-brimmed hat; while beside him a wounded comrade reached up to hand him cartridges, until he too, went down, and the big man fought alone.” Now those days are gone. Alan Wilson and his men lie together on the lonely hillside by the grave of Cecil Rhodes, and* in plade of the Matabele kraals an English town has sprung into being. “Blackwood’s Magazine.”