nd
healthful land, the sudden rise of this English town, where two years
before there had been nothing but the huts of squalid savages, had
filled every one with a delightful sense of the power of civilized man
to subjugate the earth and draw from it boundless wealth. Perhaps
something may also be set down to the climate. Bulawayo is not
beautiful. Far more attractive sites might have been found among the
hills to the south. But it has a deliciously fresh, keen brilliant air,
with a strong breeze tempering the sun-heat, and no risk of fever.
Indeed, nearly all this side of Matabililand is healthful, partly
because it has been more thickly peopled of late years than the eastern
side of the country, which was largely depopulated by the Matabili
raids.

Next to the prospects of the gold-reefs (a topic to which I shall
presently return), the question in which a visitor in 1895 felt most
interest was the condition of the natives. It seemed too much to expect
that a proud and warlike race of savages should suddenly, within less
than two years from the overthrow of their king, have abandoned all
notion of resistance to the whites and settled down as peaceable
subjects. The whites were a mere handful scattered over an immense area
of country, and the white police force did not exceed four or five
hundred men. Nevertheless, the authorities of the British South Africa
Company were of opinion that peace had been finally secured, and that no
danger remained from the natives. They observed that, while the true
Matabili who remained in the country--for some had fled down to or
across the Zambesi after the defeats of 1893--were comparatively few in
number, the other natives, mostly Makalakas,[47] were timid and
unwarlike. They held that when a native tribe has been once completely
overcome in fight, it accepts the inevitable with submission. And they
dwelt on the fact that Lo Bengula's tyranny had been a constant source
of terror to his own subjects. After his flight some of his leading
indunas came to Dr. Jameson and said, "Now we can sleep." This
confidence was shared by all the Europeans in the country. English
settlers dwelt alone without a shade of apprehension in farms, six,
eight, or ten miles from another European. In the journey I am
describing from Mafeking to Fort Salisbury, over eight hundred miles of
lonely country, my wife and I were accompanied only by my driver, a
worthy Cape Dutchman named Renske, and by a native "Ca