The anchorage
in the estuary behind the sand-spit is spacious and sheltered, and the
outrush of the tide from the large estuary keeps down, by its constant
scour, accumulations of sand upon the bar. The rise of tide at this part
of the coast, from which Madagascar is only four hundred miles distant,
is twenty-two feet, and the channel of approach, though narrow and
winding (for the coast is shallow and there are shoals for six or eight
miles out), is tolerably well buoyed and not really difficult. The
railway terminus is placed at a point within the harbour where the
sand-spit joins the mainland.

The journey which I have described, with all its difficulties, first on
the river between Beira and Fontesvilla, and then again on the track
between Chimoyo and Mtali, has since my visit become a thing of the
past. Early in 1896 the railway was opened from Fontesvilla to Beira, so
that the tedious and vexatiously uncertain voyage up or down the Pungwe
River is now superseded by a more swift if less exciting form of travel.
And the permanent way was rapidly laid from Chimoyo northward, so that
trains were running all the way from the sea to Fort Salisbury by the
middle of 1899. Should the resources of Mashonaland turn out within the
next few years to be what its more sanguine inhabitants assert, its
progress will be enormously accelerated by this line, which will give a
far shorter access to South Central Africa than can be had by the rival
lines that start from Cape Town, from Durban, and from Delagoa Bay.

[Footnote 52: This chief was the restive chief mentioned on the last
preceding page. He joined in the rising of 1896, and was, I believe,
taken prisoner and shot.]

[Footnote 53: It was here only, on the banks of a stream, that I
observed the extremely handsome arboraceous St.-John's-wort (_Hypericum
Schimperi_), mentioned in Chapter IV.]

[Footnote 54: It is in the midst of this scenery that new Mtali has been
built.]

[Footnote 55: _Law Reports_ for 1893, A. C., p. 602.]

[Footnote 56: It is in these woods that the honey bird is found, whereof
the tale is told that it hunts about for the nests of wild bees in the
hollows of trees, and when it has found one, flies close to a man so as
to attract his notice, then flutters in front of him to the nest, and
waits for him to take the honey out of the hollow (which it cannot
itself reach), expecting and receiving a share of the spoil.]

CHAPTER XVII

OBSERVATIONS