In the Matopos.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11, 11 September 1912, Page 36

In the Matopos.

(P'roin “The State” of South Africa.) Far as the eye can see they lie, those granite hills, low lengths of spellhound earth waves that rear their domed heads up to the horizon in range beyond range of dihi blue crests, a Titan s steppingstones linking earth and heaven. On the north and south, on the east and west, they stretch in their arrested undulations. holding in their rocky fastnesses the secrets of a thousand years. On every side are tossed mammoth granite boulders, gay with the scarlet and orange and brown of lichens that trail thickly over them; heaving their pale blue out of valleys standing thick with trees, waving masses of green and yellow foliage that gleam and dance in the sunlight; whilst here and there a spectral fever-tree, shaking in the wild sweet air that riots over hill and valley, stands gauntly out, a woefid ghost-tree. And deep held in the heart of the land is the Hill of the Grave, the hill that holds in its grey embrace him who living “was the land” and dead whose “soul shall be her sold.” ‘‘ln the shadow of a great rock” he lies, with the wind crying out for him, and the grim boulders standing sentinel over him, and that band of heroes of whom was written that epitaph that holds an epic—“ There were no survivors.”