THE MATABELE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE 0 SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your interesting article on "The Fall of the Mata- bele," you make a grave misstatement. You say, "It is more than eighty years since a body of Zulus, calling themselves the Matabele, entered Mashonaland and assumed its govern- ment." This is not so. The exact date of their entry into Mashonaland is not known, but it is certainly not fifty-five years ago. When Umziligazi left Zululand, he wandered about what are now the Orange Free State, Bechuanaland, and the Transvaal for a good many years, and eventually settled at Mosego, near where the Transvaal village of Rus- tenberg now is. There he was seen by the Rev. R. Moffat in 1829, and by Captain Harris, Captain Sutton, Captain Moultry, and the Revs. Lindley, Wilson, and Venable in 1835-36. In 1837, 107 Boers, with a few Barolongs, under Hendrik Potgieter and Gert Maritz, attacked him, and drove him out of Mosego. Later in the same year, Potgieter and Piet Uys, with 135 burghers, again went after him, and found him on the Merico River, fifty miles north of Mosego, and drove him still further north. In 1840, another commander was sent after him ; but he could not be found, having, it is believed, gone to the Barotse valley of the Zambesi. In 1847, Potgieter was -once more on the warpath, and came upon the Matabele at a place described as "a long way north of the Limpopo." The exact locality of this place is unknown, but it is hardly likely to have been their present location, as the country north of the Limpopo was then infested with tsetse. It may have been somewhere about the Tati district. In 1856, I think, Umziligazi was visited in the present-day Matabele country by the Rev. R. Moffat and Major Sam Edwards (as he is now), and these are described as the first white men to enter the country. Of course, a title of fifty years' occupation may be as good as one of eighty years ; but it is as well to be accurate in these matters.—I am, Sir, &a., [We welcome all information ; but why does the error, which we took from an expert's letter, signify ? — ED. Spectator.]
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