MR. SELOUS ON SOUTH-EAST AFRICA.*
MR. SELOUS could hardly have better served the cause which he has so much at heart, and for which he has done and is now doing so much active work in the field, than by the pub- lication of this important and interesting book at the present
moment, when politicians are anxiously seeking for justifica- tion for the latest of our little wars. Writing before the struggle with the Matabele towards which all eyes are now turned had become imminent, he does not deal in a direct manner with the relations between Lo Bengula and the South African Company; but all the conditions of the problem were present, and he has performed an even more valuable service by furnishing English readers with the materials for forming for themselves a judgment upon the questions at issue. In the eyes of some, indeed, Mr. Selous's testimony will be at once dis- counted by th e fact of his being a thick-and-thin supporter of Mr. Rhodes and his Company. We ourselves have never disguised our distrust of the modern revival of the system of Chartered Companies, facilitating as it does encroachment and annexa- tion, and imposing upon this country responsibility without power. There is, however, much to be said for those who, seeing, on the one hand—as Englishmen must—that to fight against all natural growth and expansion is futile and may be mischievous, and, on the other, that an English Government would seldom be supported by a public ignorant of the local conditions in the annexation, for the benefit primarily of distant and semi-independent Colonies, of fresh territories however valuable and desirable, contend that to feel our way by the tentative and comparatively non-committal employ- ment of private enterprise may sometimes be true wisdom and it is undeniable that annexation for the purpose of colonising can only prosper when undertaken and supported by spontaneous and individual effort, and that individuals in such a case can only act in association. The means taken by Mr. Rhodes to found the Company and obtain the charter have excited, in our opinion justly, much adverse comment ; and Mr. Selous has abstained from remarks of any kind on this point. It can only be said that, if financial and political methods of a not too scrupulous kind were necessary to enable him to carry his point, Mr. Rhodes was not the man to disdain to employ them. It is ovtain, in any case, that success, if only it be followed by wise administration by the Company, will silence criticism; and if the importance of the enterprise, and the prospects of advantage both to the occupied country and to its occupiers, be any justification for aggression, the founder of "Rhodesia" (if so, with somewhat crude hero- worship it is to be named) will have little to fear from a comparison with many founders of States. Now, on these points Mr. Selous speaks with the unique authority of a man who has spent eight years in the country as a hunter and ex-
• Trawl and Adventuro in South-Beat Africa. By F. O. Selous, 0.M.Z.S. With numerous Illustrations and Map. London : Rowland Ward and Cob 1893. plorer, and he speaks with enthusiasm and certainty of the climate, the fertility of the land, and of the existence of gold; while the shadowy Portuguese claim having now vanished into air, and the native population having been reduced to a timid and starving remnant by their Zulu oppressors, the country is crying out for the protection and settlement of the white man. Nor are the difficulties of the occupation such as need alarm the most cautious. The hostility of the Matabele becomes a real danger only if it is underrated ; the ultimate collision was inevitable, and has long been foreseen ; and nothing but good can come to South-Eastern Africa from the destruction of the power of a most fierce and barbarous race, without a redeeming quality which might secure them the sympathy so apt to be evoked by the vision of the noble savage. All these facts, it will be said, are already well known from Mr. Selous's own testimony as well as from that of all who are familiar with the local conditions; but the publication of a volume which is sure of a wide popularity, and which carries conviction by the moderation with which the facts are stated and the details by which they are illustrated, will render, if indeed it has not already done so, an important service in securing for the colonists who have identified themselves at this crisis with the Company a great measure of sympathy in this country, and in strengthening the hands of those who feel 'that for England to hold back now will greatly imperil the prospect of a future good understanding between herself and her South African dependencies. It is idle to talk about the uselessness of great self-governing colonies to the Mother-country ; we are far too deeply committed to the policy by which, surely with singularly little ex- pense to ourselves, we are bound to protect them and encourage their growth without direct return, to draw back now ; and it is only by continuing on these lines in no grudging or half-hearted spirit, that we can hope to maintain the union of hearts between English-speaking communities which in the future may enable this country to renew her youth and maintain her place among the nations.
Mr. Selous gives an interesting account of the history and antiquities of Mashonaland, already a subject of hot contro- versy among experts, and finds in the traces which still remain among them of Arab blood, and in the undoubted facts that the wall-building and gold-mining, originally learnt from the worshippers of Baal, were carried on con- tinuously up to the middle of the present century, good reason for believing that the ancient builders of Zimbabwi were never a highly civilised race who colonised the country, as Mr. Theodore Bent has described them, but commercial settlers, who, coming into the country with few or no women with them of their own race, gradually became fused with and nationally lost among the aboriginal blacks. He does not believe in the " ruined cities " of Mashonaland, and his investigations certainly seem to show that the deterioration of the population was gradual, and that the inhabitants of Makoni's and Mang- wendi's countries only ceased to surround their towns with well-built stone walls during the last generation, when they found that these walls offered but an insufficient protection against the Zulu hordes of Maniko. Even more curious are the traces be has found of recent gold-mining operations. " My travelling-companion for two years, Mr. George Wood, often told me how he had seen the Mashonas extracting gold from quartz," and how, "after crushing the washed quartz, they used to melt the gold into little ingots in small crucibles made for the purpose." At Tati, Mr. Selous saw an old shaft, supported by logs of mopani wood, covered with hark, and in good condition, which could not have been very ancient ; and the natives sold their gold to the Portuguese, as they formerly sold it to the Arab merchants. The Barotsi of the Upper Zam- besi, he further tells us, still carve the same chevron patterns on their pottery and on their knife-sheaths that the ancient Baal-worshippers carved in stone-work round the Temple of Zimbabwi. Finally, until recent times, the high plateau of Mashonaland clearly, he thinks, supported a large native population, rich in cattle; and it is only the destruction of this population by the Zulu migration northwards, which has made room for the European immigration of to-day. "As it is, not only has the occupation of the country by the British South African Company been effected without wronging the native races, but it has very likely saved some of them from absolute destruction at the bands of the Matabele." As for the climate, the fact that the whole of the plateau lies at an elevation of over three thousand feet above the sea, while much of it reaches an altitude of from five to six thousand feet, and that the mean temperature of the years 1891 and 1892 ranged from 57.5° to 70.5° (the ex- tremes being 930 in October, 1891, and 34° in June, 1892), speaks for itself as regards the fitness of the country for colonisation by Northern Europeans. In fact, with Salisbury in direct telegraphic communication:with the world, with the railway opened from Beira through the tsetse-fly infested dis- tricts between the East Coast andfliashonaland, with good weekly newspapers published at Salisbury and Victoria, with much of the land taken up by farmers, and wheat, oats, barley, and all sorts of vegetables successfully grown, the Colony may be said to have passedithe stage of experiment.
We have lingered long over what is the most important part of this opportune work ; but many will be attracted by the tales of sport and adventure of which it mainly consists, rather than by the historical and political information it affords. Both classes of readers, however, will find interest in the account of the great Pioneering, Expedition of 1890, which, headed by Dr. Jameson, cut the road under our author's guidance without a chart through unexplored land round the outskirts of Lo Bengula's country from the Macloutsie River, finally emerging in August of that year upon the grassy downs in the middle of which the town of Victoria now stands, and reached what was to become Fort Salisbury; and in the story of Mr. Selous's journey in the Manica country, of the treaty with Motoko, and the other events which secured that country from Portuguese encroachment. For thrilling interest, too, and realistic description, it would be hard to beat the account of the ruin of his hunting expedition to the Central Zambesi in 1888, and his own marvellous escape from death at the hands of the naked Mashukulumbwi, and their chief Mwenga. Escaping alone from the nights attack on his camp with a rifle and four cartridges, after- wards stolen from him, he swam a river and wandered through the African scrub, occasionally coming upon a village full of armed natives, for nearly a fortnight; before meeting with the other survivors of the expedition who had fled in the same direction as himself. The natives, however, and their manner and customs, unfortunately do not play a large part in the book, and the famous hunter naturally takes a greater interest in big game of all sorts. The following, however, is a curious tale :— "In October, 1874, when returning to my waggon from a hunting trip up the Chobi, I met Mr. T., a trader, who had just returned from Sesheki. In the course of conversation he told me that one day as he was drinking beer with Sepopo, who had a strong sense of humour, a very old man crept up and begged for food. The King, turning to some of his men, asked who he was, and learned that he belonged to one of the slave tribes. He then said 'He's a very old man ; can he do any work P and was in- formed that the old man was quite past work and dependent upon charity,—a very, very scarce article in the interior of Africa, Then said the King : ' Take him down to the river and hold his head under water • ' and the old man was forthwith led down to the river. Presently the executioners returned. 'Is the old man dead P' said &pope. Dead he is,' they answered.—' Then give him to the crocodiles,' said the King, and went on drinking beer and chatting to my friend T."
Many are the stories of lion-hunts, and many the touches describing their ways and looks :— " When at last he pulled up, he trotted slowly back to his com- rade, and then they both lay down on the bare, open ground, with their massive paws outstretched, their heads held high, and their mouths half-open, with their tongues lolling out, for it was a very hot day. They lay almost exactly in the position of Landseor's lions in Trafalgar Square ; and it is quite a mistake to say-that that great artist has made an error in representing lions lying with their fore-paws straight out like a dog. When on the alert, a lion always lies like this, and only bends his paws inwards like a cat when resting thoroughly at his ease."
The attitude of a lion when about to charge, with his head held low down and his tail standing straight up, is described in another place; and also the gleam in the eyes of an angry lion. "Any one who has not seen at close quarters the fierce light that scintillates from the eyes of a wounded lion or any of the other large Felidm, can hardly imagine its wondrous brilliancy and furious concentration." We can never read with pleasure of the destruction of elephants, the most valu- able, however, of all the hunter's prey. Mr. Selous describes how on one occasion he gave an elephant he killed twelve shots, the first two of which were both through the heart, yet he did not fall, but only slackened his pace,—a fact illustrating the extraordinary vitality of these noble beasts. Mr. Selma is above everything a sportsman, and never kills for the mere sake of killing ; but, as he says when he shot with some com- punction an ostrich with a nest of chicks, R20 is £20 all the world over. He is known besides as a naturalist of great distinction, and many of his finest specimens are to be seen at the Natural History Museum, and in the South African Museum at Cape Town, to which institution he has also given a splendid collection of African butterflies. His love of science is seen in many a page of the present work, and comes out rather oddly in the outburst of enthusiasm in which he named a 'mountain after Darwin, "the illustrious Englishman whose far-reaching theories, logical conclusions based on an enor- mous mass of incontrovertible facts, have revolutionised modern thought, and destroyed for ever many old beliefs that had held men's minds in thrall for centuries ! "
It is easy to understand, in reading the pages of this beautifully illustrated volume, the fascination which life in Africa exercises over so many minds, and the reluctance with which those who have once tasted its delights return to the ways of an older civilisation. It is no wonder that love of adventure and enterprise causes so many young Englishmen to seek their fortunes in this land, and Mr. Selma exults in the fact that England in consequence is parting with what she can perhaps ill spare,—some of her best blood and most vigorous life. Africa is not yet face to face with the race-problems which any large white civilisation among inferior races must one day produce. Let us hope that, like the Dutch Boers to whom Mr. Selous pays a tribute of heartfelt admiration, the settlers of our nation will be able to maintain and transmit unimpaired the qualities which they have inherited from their Northern ancestors.
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