Chapter 45

watercourses for irrigating the soil, which were constructed by some race of immigrants accustomed to artificial irrigation in their own country, for it would hardly have occurred to natives to construct such works here, where the rainfall is sufficient for the needs of tillage. Still farther to the north is a less elevated region, remarkable for the traces 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 recede, and wide plains begin to open to the east and south. As the country sinks, the temperature rises and the air grows heavier and less keen. The ground is covered with wood, and in the woods along the streams a few palms and bamboos and other tropical forms of vegetation begin to appear.[56] But we found the woods in many places stripped bare. Terrible swarms of locusts had passed, leaving a track of dismal bareness. It had been a dry year, too, and even what grass the locusts had spared was thin and withered. Thus for want of food the cattle had perished. All along the road from Mtali we saw oxen lying dead, often by some pool in a brook, to which they had staggered to drink, and where they lay down to die. We encountered few waggons, and those few were almost all standing with the team unyoked, some of their beasts dead or sickly, some, too weak to draw the load farther, obliged to stand idly where they had halted till the animals should regain strength, or fresh oxen be procured. This is what a visitation of locusts means, and this is how the progress of a country is retarded by the stoppage of the only means of transport.

We reached the terminus of the railway at Chimoyo after two days' long and fatiguing travel from Mtali, including an upset of our vehicle in descending a steep donga to the bed of a streamlet--an upset which might easily have proved serious, but gave us nothing worse than a few bruises. The custom being to start a train in the afternoon and run it through the night,--all trains were then special,--we had plenty of time to look round the place, and fortunately found a comfortable store and a most genial Scottish landlord from Banffshire. There was, however, nothing to see, not even Portuguese local colour; for though Chimoyo is well within the Portuguese frontier, the village is purely English, and was living by the transport service which then made the end of the railway its starting-point for the territories of the Company. Now that it has become merely a station, the railway being now (1899) open all the way to Fort Salisbury, it may have dwindled away. Having nothing else to do, I climbed through the sultry noon to the top of the nearest kopje, a steep granite hill which, as I was afterwards told, is a favourite "house of call" for lions. No forest monarch, however, presented himself to welcome me, and I was left to enjoy the view alone. It was striking. Guarding the western horizon rose the long chain of mountains from which we had emerged stretching in a huge arc from south-east to north, with some bold outlying peaks flung forward from the main mass, all by their sharp, stern outlines, in which similar forms were constantly repeated, showing that they were built of the same hard crystalline rocks. Beneath, the country spread out in a vast, wooded plain, green or brown, according as the wood was denser in one part and sparser in another. It was still low wood, with no sense of tropical luxuriance about it, and the ground still dry, with not a glimpse of water anywhere. Here and there out of this sea of forest rose isolated heights whose abrupt craggy tops glistened in the sunlight. To the east the plain fell slowly away to an immensely distant horizon, where lay the deadly flats that border the Indian Ocean. Except where the iron roofs of the huts at Chimoyo shone, there was not a sign of human dwelling or human labour through this great wild country, lying still and monotonous under a cloudless sky. It has been a wilderness from the beginning of the world until now, traversed, no doubt, many centuries ago by the gold-seekers whose favourite track went up from the coast past Great Zimbabwye into what is now Matabililand, traversed again occasionally in later times by Portuguese traders, but in no wise altered during these thousands of years from its original aspect. Now at last its turn has come. A new race of gold-seekers have built a railway, and along the railway, wherever there are not swamps to breed fever, the land will be taken for farms, and the woods will be cut down, and the wild beasts will slink away, and trading-posts will grow into villages, and the journey from Beira to Bulawayo will become as easy and familiar as is to-day the journey from Chicago to San Francisco, through a country which a century ago was as little known as this African wilderness.

The railway from Chimoyo to the sea had in 1895 one of the narrowest gauges in the world (two feet), and its tiny locomotives and cars wore almost a toy air. It has since been widened to the three feet six gauge of the other South African lines. The construction was difficult, for the swampy lands along the coast are largely under water during the rains, but the gain to the country has been enormous. Not only has the railway abridged the toilsome and costly ox transport of goods from Beira to the edge of the high country--a transport whose difficulty lay not merely in the badness of the track through ground almost impassable during and after the rains, but also in the prevalence of the tsetse-fly, whose bite is fatal to cattle. It has enabled travellers to cross in a few hours one of the most unhealthy regions in the world, most of which is infested by fevers in and after the wet season, and the lower parts of which are so malarious that few who spend three nights in them, even in the dry season, escape an attack. The banks of the rivers and other damper spots will continue to breed this curse of maritime Africa, although things will doubtless improve when the country grows more settled, and the marshes have been drained, and the long grass has been eaten down by cattle; for when the tsetse-fly has ceased to be dangerous cattle may come in. It appears that the fly kills cattle not by anything poisonous in its bite, but because it communicates to them a minute parasite which lives in the blood of some kinds of game, and which is more pernicious to cattle than it is to the game. Accordingly, when the game vanishes, the fly either vanishes also or becomes comparatively harmless. Already places once infested by it have by the disappearance of the game become available for ranching. Recent researches seem to have shown that malarial fevers in man are also due to an animal parasite: and this discovery is thought to damp the hope, which I remember to have heard Mr. Darwin express, that the fever-stricken regions of the tropics might become safe by ascertaining what the fever microbe is and securing men against it by inoculation. Those, however, who hold that this parasite is carried into the blood of man by a mosquito seem to entertain some hope that drainage may in some places almost expunge the mosquito. The railway was made entirely by native labour gathered from the surrounding regions, and the contractors told me they had less difficulty with the Kafirs than they expected. It paid, however, a heavy toll in European life. Not one of the engineers and foremen escaped fever, and many died. The risk for those employed on the line is of course now much slighter, because the worst spots are known and there are now houses to sleep in.

Shortly after leaving Chimoyo the train ran through a swarm of locusts miles long. It was a beautiful sight. The creatures flash like red snowflakes in the sun; the air glitters with their gauzy wings. But it is also terrible. An earthquake or a volcanic eruption is hardly more destructive and hardly more irresistible. The swarms may be combated when the insect walks along the ground, for then trenches may be dug into which the advancing host falls. But when it flies nothing can stop it. It is noteworthy that for eighteen years prior to the arrival of the British pioneers in 1890 there had been no great swarms. Since that year there have been several; so the Kafir thinks that it is the white man's coming that has provoked the powers of evil to send this plague as well as the murrain.

We ran down the one hundred and eighteen miles from Chimoyo to Fontesvilla during the afternoon and night, halting for three or four hours for dinner at a clearing where an inn and store have been built. The pace was from ten to fifteen miles an hour. After the first twenty miles, during which one still has glimpses of the strange isolated peaks that spring up here and there from the plain, the scenery becomes rather monotonous, for the line runs most of the way through thick forest, the trees higher than those of the interior, yet not of any remarkable beauty. For the last twenty-five miles the railway traverses a dead and dreary flat. The gentle rise of the ground to the west conceals even the outlying spurs of the great range behind, and to the north and south there is an unbroken level. The soil is said to be generally poor, a very thin layer of vegetable mould lying over sand, and the trees are few and seldom tall. It is a country full of all sorts of game, from buffaloes, elands, and koodoos downward to the small antelopes; and as game abounds, so also do lions abound. The early morning is the time when most of these creatures go out to feed, and we strained our eyes as soon as there was light enough to make them out from the car windows. But beyond some wild pig and hartebeest, and a few of the smaller antelopes, nothing could be discerned upon the pastures or among the tree clumps. Perhaps the creatures have begun to learn that the railroad brings their enemies, and keep far away from it. A year after our visit the murrain, to which I have already referred, appeared in this region, and wrought fearful devastation among the wild animals, especially the buffaloes.

The railway now runs all the way to the port of Beira, but in October, 1895, came to an end at a place called Fontesvilla, on the Pungwe River, near the highest point to which the tide rises. We had therefore to take to the water in order to reach Beira, where a German steamer was timed to call two days later; and our friends in Mashonaland had prepared us to expect some disagreeable experiences on the river, warning us not to assume that twelve or fourteen hours would be enough, even in a steamer, to accomplish the fifty miles of navigation that lie between Fontesvilla and the sea. They had been specially insistent that we should remain in Fontesvilla itself no longer than was absolutely necessary; for Fontesvilla has the reputation of being the most unhealthy spot in all this unhealthy country. We were told that the preceding year had been a salubrious one, for only forty-two per cent. of the European residents had died. There may have been in these figures, when closely scrutinized, some element of exaggeration, but the truth they were intended to convey is beyond dispute; and the bright young assistant superintendent of the railroad was mentioned, with evident wonder, as the only person who had been more than three months in the place without a bad attack of fever. Fontesvilla has not the externals of a charnel-house. It consists of seven or eight scattered frame houses, with roofs of corrugated iron, set in a dull, featureless flat on the banks of a muddy river. The air is sultry and depressing, but has not that foul swamp smell with which Poti, on the Black Sea, reeks, the most malarious spot I had ever before visited. Nor was there much stagnant water visible; indeed, the ground seemed dry, though there are marshes hidden among the woods on the other side of the river. As neither of the steamers that ply on the Pungwe could come up at neap tides, and with the stream low,--for the rains had not yet set in,--the young superintendent (to whose friendly help we were much beholden) had bespoken a rowboat to come up for us from the lower part of the river. After waiting from eight till half-past ten o'clock for this boat, we began to fear it had failed us, and, hastily engaging a small two-oared one that lay by the bank, set off in it down the stream. Fortunately after two and a half miles the other boat, a heavy old tub, was seen slowly making her way upward, having on board the captain of the little steam-launch, the launch herself being obliged to remain much lower down the river. We transferred ourselves and our effects to this boat, and floated gaily down, thinking our troubles over.

The Pungwe is here about one hundred yards wide, but very shallow, and with its water so turbid that we could not see the bottom where the depth exceeded two feet. It was noon; the breeze had dropped, and the sun was so strong that we gladly took refuge in the little cabin or rather covered box--a sort of hen coop--at the stern. The stream and the tide were with us, and we had four native rowers, but our craft was so heavy that we accomplished less than two miles an hour. As the channel grew wider and the current spread itself hither and thither over sand banks, the bed became more shallow, and from time to time we grounded. When this happened, the native rowers jumped into the water and pushed or pulled the boat along. The farther down we went, and the more the river widened, so much the more often did we take the bottom, and the harder did we find it to get afloat again. Twelve miles below Fontesvilla, a river called the Bigimiti comes in on the right, and at its mouth we took on board a bold young English sportsman with the skin of a huge lion. Below the confluence, where a maze of sand banks encumbers the channel, we encountered a strong easterly breeze. The big clumsy boat made scarcely any way against it, and stuck upon the sand so often that the Kafirs, who certainly worked with a will, were more than half the time in the water up to their knees, tugging and shoving to get her off. Meanwhile the tide, what there was of it, was ebbing fast, and the captain admitted that if we did not get across these shoals within half an hour we should certainly lie fast upon them till next morning at least, and how much longer no one could tell. It was not a pleasant prospect, for we had no food except some biscuits and a tin of cocoa, and a night on the Pungwe, with pestiferous swamps all round, meant almost certainly an attack of fever. Nothing, however, could be done beyond what the captain and the Kafirs were doing, so that suspense was weighted by no sense of personal responsibility. We moved alternately from stern to bow, and back from bow to stern, to lighten the boat at one end or the other, and looked to windward to see from the sharp curl of the waves whether the gusts which stopped our progress were freshening further. Fortunately they abated. Just as the captain seemed to be giving up hope--the only fault we had with him was that his face revealed too plainly his anxieties--we felt ourselves glide off into a deeper channel; the Kafirs jumped in and smote the dark-brown current with their oars, and the prospect of a restful night at Beira rose once more before us. But our difficulties were not quite over, for we grounded several times afterwards, and progress was so slow that it seemed very doubtful whether we should find and reach before dark the little steam-launch that had come up to meet us.

Ever since my childish imagination had been captivated by the picture of Africa's sunny fountains rolling down their golden sand, the idea of traversing a tropical forest on the bosom of a great African river had retained its fascination. Here at last was the reality, and what a dreary reality! The shallow, muddy stream, broken into many channels, which inclosed low, sandy islets, had spread to a width of two miles. The alluvial banks, rising twenty feet in alternate layers of sand and clay, cut off any view of the country behind. All that could be seen was a fringe of thick, low trees, the edge of the forest that ran back from the river. Conspicuous among them was the ill-omened "fever tree," with its gaunt, bare, ungainly arms and yellow bark--the tree whose presence indicates a pestilential air. Here was no luxuriant variety of form, no wealth of colour, no festooned creepers nor brilliant flowers, but a dull and sad monotony, as we doubled point after point and saw reach after reach of the featureless stream spread out before us. Among the trees not a bird was to be seen or heard; few even fluttered on the bosom of the river. We watched for crocodiles sunning themselves on the sandspits, and once or twice thought we saw them some two hundred yards away, but they had always disappeared as we drew nearer. The beast is quick to take alarm at the slightest noise, and not only the paddles of a steamer, but even the plash of oars, will drive him into the water. For his coyness we were partly consoled by the gambols of the river-horses. All round the boat these creatures were popping up their huge snouts and shoulders, splashing about, and then plunging again into the swirling water. Fortunately none rose quite close to us, for the hippopotamus, even if he means no mischief, may easily upset a boat when he comes up under it, or may be induced by curiosity to submerge it with one bite of his strong jaws, in which case the passengers are likely to have fuller opportunities than they desire of becoming acquainted with the crocodiles.

Among such sights the sultry afternoon wore itself slowly into night, and just as dark fell--it falls like a stage curtain in these latitudes--we joyfully descried the steam-launch waiting for us behind a sandy point. Once embarked upon her, we made better speed through the night. It was cloudy, with a struggling moon, which just showed us a labyrinth of flat, densely wooded isles, their margins fringed with mangrove trees. Exhausted by a journey of more than thirty hours without sleep, we were now so drowsy as to be in constant danger of falling off the tiny launch, which had neither seats nor bulwarks, and even the captain's strong tea failed to rouse us. Everything seemed like a dream--this lonely African river, with the faint moonlight glimmering here and there upon its dark bosom, while the tree tops upon untrodden islets flitted past in a slow, funereal procession, befitting a land of silence and death.

At last, when it was now well past midnight, a few lights were seen in the distance, and presently we were at Beira. As we touched the shore we were told that the German steamer had already arrived, two days before her time, and was to start in the morning at ten o'clock. So we made straight for her, and next day at noon sailed for Delagoa Bay.

Beira stands on a sand-spit between the ocean and the estuary of the Pungwe River. Though the swamps come close up to it, the town itself is tolerably healthy at all seasons, because the strong easterly breeze blows from the sea three days out of four. Before 1890 there was hardly even a house, and its quick growth is entirely due to its having been discovered to possess the best harbour on the coast, and to be therefore the fittest point of departure from the sea for the territories of the British South African Company.

In old days the chief Portuguese settlement on this part of the coast was at Sofala, a few miles farther to the south, which had been visited by Vasco da Gama in A.D. 1502, and where the Portuguese built a fort in 1505. It was then an Arab town, and famous as the place whence most of the gold brought down from the interior was exported. Now it has shrunk to insignificance, and Beira will probably become the most important haven on the coast between Delagoa Bay, to the south, and Dar-es-Salaam, the head-quarters of German administration, to the north. It may, however, be rivalled by Pemba Bay north of the Zambesi, from which it is proposed to run a railway to the south end of Lake Nyassa. 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.]