ces it bears of having been at one time densely populated. Tillage
was so extensive that the very hillsides were built up into terraces to
be planted with crops. To-day there are hardly any inhabitants, for a
good many years ago Mzila, the father of Gungunhana, chief of a fierce
and powerful tribe which lives on the lower course of the Sabi River,
raided all this country, and in successive invasions killed off or
chased away the whole population. Such wholesale slaughter and
devastation is no uncommon thing in the annals of South Africa. Tshaka,
the uncle of Cetewayo, annihilated the inhabitants over immense tracts
round Zululand. And in comparison with such bloodthirsty methods the
Assyrian plan of deporting conquered populations from their homes to
some distant land may have seemed, and indeed may have been, a
substantial step in human progress. However, just when Tshaka was
massacring his Kafir neighbours, the Turks were massacring the
Christians of Chios, and at the time of our visit, in October, 1895,
Abdul-Hamid II. was beginning his massacres in Asia Minor; so perhaps
the less said about progress the better.

The track from Mtali to the sea crosses a high ridge at a point called
the Christmas Pass, and descends into Portuguese territory through some
very noble and varied mountain scenery.[54] It reminded us sometimes of
the Italian slopes of the Eastern Alps, sometimes of the best parts of
the Perthshire Highlands, though of course it was rather in the forms of
hill and valley than in the trees that clothed their slopes that this
resemblance lay. The first Portuguese settlement is at a place called
Macequece, or Massikessi, where the pioneers of the British South Africa
Company conducted in 1891 a little war on their own account with the
Portuguese, whose superior forces they routed. The Portuguese claimed
all this inland region on the Hinterland principle, in respect of their
ownership of the coast, while the British pioneers relied on the fact
that their adversaries had never established a really effective
occupation. The dispute was carried by the Portuguese Mozambique Company
into the English courts of law,[55] and was ultimately adjusted
diplomatically by an agreement between the British and Portuguese
governments, signed June 11, 1891. The delimitation of the frontiers was
not fully completed in this region till 1896, but Massikessi was by the
treaty of 1891 left to Portugal. After Massikessi the mountains r