l strata of
sandstone that form Table Mountain rest.]

[Footnote 43: Here, in December, 1896, the natives rose in revolt,
exasperated by the slaughter of their cattle, though that slaughter was
the only method of checking the progress of the cattle plague.]

[Footnote 44: There is also a weaker kind made, intoxicating only if
consumed in very large quantity.]

[Footnote 45: For most of what is here stated regarding Khama I am
indebted to an interesting little book by the late Bishop Knight-Bruce,
entitled _Khama, an African Chief_.]

CHAPTER XV

FROM BULAWAYO TO FORT SALISBURY--MATABILILAND AND MASHONALAND

Bulawayo means, in the Zulu tongue, the place of slaughter, and under
the sway of Lo Bengula it deserved its name. Just sixty years ago
Mosilikatze, chief of the Matabili, driven out of what is now the
Transvaal Republic by the Dutch Boers who had emigrated from Cape
Colony, fled four hundred miles to the north-west and fell like a sudden
tempest upon the Makalakas and other feeble tribes who pastured their
cattle in this remote region. His tribe was not large, but every man was
a tried warrior. The Makalakas were slaughtered or chased away or
reduced to slavery, and when Mosilikatze died in 1870, his son Lo
Bengula succeeded to the most powerful kingdom in South Africa after
that of Cetewayo, chief of the Zulus. Of the native town which grew up
round the king's kraal there is now not a trace--all was destroyed in
1893. The kraal itself, which Lo Bengula fired when he fled away, has
gone, and only one old tree marks the spot where the king used to sit
administering justice to his subjects. A large part of this justice
consisted in decreeing death to those among his _indunas_ or other
prominent men who had excited his suspicions or whose cattle he desired
to appropriate. Sometimes he had them denounced--"smelt out," they
called it--by the witch-doctors as guilty of practising magic against
him. Sometimes he dispensed with a pretext, and sent a messenger to the
hut of the doomed man to tell him the king wanted him. The victim, often
ignorant of his fate, walked in front, while the executioner, following
close behind, suddenly dealt him with the _knob-kerry_, or heavy-ended
stick, one tremendous blow, which crushed his skull and left him dead
upon the ground. Women, on the other hand, were strangled.[46] No one
disputed the despot's will, for the Matabili, like other Zulus, show to
their king the absolute