imbabwe, were long believed to be Phoenician in
origin. I have a book here which tells all about them. But now it is
believed that they were built by natives. I maintain that the men who
could erect piles like that'--and he showed me a picture--'were
something more than petty chiefs.'

Presently the object of this conversation appeared. Mr Wardlaw thought
that we were underrating the capacity of the native. This opinion was
natural enough in a schoolmaster, but not in the precise form Wardlaw
put it. It was not his intelligence which he thought we underrated,
but his dangerousness. His reasons, shortly, were these: There were
five or six of them to every white man; they were all, roughly
speaking, of the same stock, with the same tribal beliefs; they had
only just ceased being a warrior race, with a powerful military
discipline; and, most important, they lived round the rim of the
high-veld plateau, and if they combined could cut off the white man
from the sea. I pointed out to him that it would only be a matter of
time before we opened the road again. 'Ay,' he said, 'but think of
what would happen before then. Think of the lonely farms and the
little dorps wiped out of the map. It would be a second and bloodier
Indian mutiny. 'I'm not saying it's likely,' he went on, 'but I
maintain it's possible. Supposing a second Tchaka turned up, who could
get the different tribes to work together. It wouldn't be so very hard
to smuggle in arms. Think of the long, unwatched coast in Gazaland and
Tongaland. If they got a leader with prestige enough to organize a
crusade against the white man, I don't see what could prevent a rising.'

'We should get wind of it in time to crush it at the start,' I said.

'I'm not so sure. They are cunning fellows, and have arts that we know
nothing about. You have heard of native telepathy. They can send news
over a thousand miles as quick as the telegraph, and we have no means
of tapping the wires. If they ever combined they could keep it as
secret as the grave. My houseboy might be in the rising, and I would
never suspect it till one fine morning he cut my throat.'

'But they would never find a leader. If there was some exiled prince
of Tchaka's blood, who came back like Prince Charlie to free his
people, there might be danger; but their royalties are fat men with top
hats and old frock-coats, who live in dirty locations.'

Wardlaw admitted this, but said that there might be