tihravy of Che t:heolo;gical ^tmimvy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PURCHASED BY THE 
 HAMILL MISSIONARY FUND 
 DT 3020 .M37 Kb4 1893 
 Knight-Bruce, George Wyndhaj 
 
 Hamilton, 1852-1896. 
 Journals of the Mashonaland 
 mission, 1888 to 1892 I 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/journalsofmashonOOknig 
 
/^^^"^^ OF PHi^ce^ 
 JOURNALS IIauu 8 1956^^ 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MASIIONALAND MISSION 
 
 1888 TO 1892 
 
 BY 
 
 G. W. II. '4nigiit-bruce 
 
 BISHOP I'OR MASHON.VLAND 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY L. K. B. 
 
 Tlie hut and the dirt, the rags and the skin, 
 The grovelling want and the darkened mind,- 
 
 I looked on this ; but the Lord within : 
 1 would what He saw was in me to find.' 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE 
 
 Sodetii for i\t |Uopagation of tk 6osptl in foreign |ans 
 
 19 DELAHAY STREET, S.W. 
 
 1893 
 
PRINTED BY 
 BPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NKW STREET SvJUARE 
 LONDON' 
 
TO THE VENERABLE 
 
 SOCIETY FOR THE PEOPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 AND TO THE 
 
 EEVEEEND PREBENDAEY TUCKEE 
 
 THIS LITTLE ACCOUNT 
 OF THE MISSION TO MASHONALAND 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE ENCOURAGEMENT AND HELP 
 THAT MADE THE MISSION POSSIBLE 
 
PEEPACE. 
 
 When I read the })ru()l-slieets of the extracts of my 
 Journal for 1891, 1 felt tliat the scanty allusions to the 
 spiritual aspect of the work might be misunderstood ; 
 but a.s the Journal consists mainly of notes written at 
 camp fires or during the intervals of travelling, little 
 appears except what was necessary to recall the events 
 of the day. There was little time to record conver- 
 sations with chiefs and peo])le, interesting though 
 they were. I consider that our Heavenly Father's 
 intention that the Gospel should be preached to the 
 Mashona has been so plainly shown by His leadings 
 during the late years, and that His blessing on the 
 work, when begun, has been so continuous, that any 
 intermittent allusions to either would rather obscure 
 the great end to which day after day material work 
 was tending. 
 
 The diary wafi not intended to have the interest 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 of a book of travel, few of the dail}' incidents being 
 written down beyond tliose that had some direct 
 connection with the work. 
 
 Perliaps, too, those who have tried to do Christ's 
 work among the heathen would rather that they 
 should commend it to their fellow-Christians by the 
 facts as they exist than by appeals to their feelings ; 
 for if the missionary did not believe that the accu- 
 mulation of time spent in wearying travelling without 
 the opportunity of doing any directly spiritual work, 
 and the anxieties and responsibilities for the material 
 needs of the Mission and its workers, were essentially a 
 part of Christ's work, their deadening influence would 
 very soon render the return to a life of sincere spiritual 
 exhortation almost impossible. 
 
 ' The mount for vision — but below 
 The paths of daily duty go, 
 And nobler life therein shall own 
 The pattern on the mountain shown,' 
 
 G. W. H. Knight-Bruce. 
 
 MarcK 1892. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Mashonaland in the past — Its position — The Matabele raids — 
 Bishop Knif^ht-Bruce's ditliciilty in getting into the country — The 
 returning Impi — The Bishop's walk to the Zambesi — Mashona ideas 
 on rehgion — Down the Zambesi — Eichard Foster — Sipiro — Christian 
 servants page 1-11 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Introduction — continued. 
 
 The change in Mashonaland — The Chartered Company — The 
 Diocese created — The Mission party — The three routes and their 
 difficulties — The Pungwe chosen — The tsetse fly — Scarcity of carriers 
 
 page 12-16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE bishop's journal. 
 
 The Bishop reaches the Pungwe River — 'Mpanda's — The fight at 
 Massi-Kessi — The Bishop's walk to Umtali — Walk to Fort Salisbury — 
 "Visits to chiefs — Catechists left at work — Arrival of the Hospital 
 Nurses— Mashonas as labourers . . . . page 17-51 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE bishop's journal, Continued. 
 
 A start for the Southern tribes — Native beer-drinking — Visits to 
 chiefs — The head chief Maranki — The lower ground — Tribal organ- 
 isation — The Gumbu people — The Nyamaza women— Parpedo on 
 death — Return to Umtali — Death of Dr. Glanville . page 52-73 
 
VIU 
 
 TABI.I-: OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE bishop's journal, CQtitimied. 
 
 Difficulties of a start for Fort Salisbury — Visit to the chief Maconi 
 — The catechist Frank — Good reports of the eatechist Bernard — Land 
 for the Mission — The Land Question — Ride to Fort Charter — Mashona 
 customs — A typical village — Sipiro — Mashona ironwork — Return to 
 Umtali — Building progress — Wilson's return — Bishoj) leaves for Beira 
 Bay and England page 74-91 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MISS blennerhasset's journal. 
 
 Nursing at 'Mpanda's— Crossing the Pimgwe — A night by the camp 
 fire — Sarmento — A wet walk — Trouble with the carriers — Native 
 curiosity — Camping at Massi-Kessi— Desertion of the carriers — A hard 
 walk — Arrival at Umtali — Wliy native labour is hard to obtain — No 
 transport — Mashonaland posts — The new Hospital . page 92-96 
 
 The photographs are by Mr, Cadwallader of Capetown, 
 
MASHONALAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 THE COUNTRY AND THE BISHOP'S FIRST JOURNEY, 
 
 The thrilling scenes of Church history set with 
 martyrdom have been in Central Africa ; in Southern 
 Africa there has been the steady movement forward 
 that annexes, almost silently, one race and country 
 after another. We at home hardly even realise how 
 the red colour-wash of English rule is painted further 
 and further over the world's map ; but perhaps we do 
 not realise at all how a greater King is spreading His 
 kingdom, for truly ' it cometh not with observation.' 
 
 In 1889 the northern border of the Transvaal 
 was the end of the white man's rule, and practically 
 of his settlements. But between that border and 
 the Zambesi was a large country, lying, roughly 
 speaking, between latitudes 22° and 16°, that was 
 very vaguely known ; where its borders to the east 
 touched the Indian Ocean there were a few Portu- 
 guese stations, far inland to the west there was a 
 great nation known as the Matabele, while between 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 THE COUNTRY AND 
 
 the two lay a land tliat was waiting to be rediscovered. 
 Yes, rediscovered ; for Mashonaland is the only dis- 
 trict in Central or Southern Africa that seems to 
 have had a past history of busier days and more 
 civilised culture. Wliich of the centuries saw it we 
 cannot say, nor who the settlers were, nor when 
 they passed away, leaving their mark behind in 
 numberless old shafts, not deep, but so numerous in 
 places as to alter the whole surface of the ground ; 
 in strongly built fortress towers, and, possibly, in the 
 Mashona knowledge of smelting iron. The country 
 is in many parts very beautiful, and in many thickly 
 populated. But till two years ago poor Mashonaland 
 was kept by the Matabele chief as a Scotch laird 
 might keep a deer-forest ; every spring his regiments 
 of fighting men (' impis ' they are called) were marched 
 in to kill and sack, bringing back with them girls, 
 boys, and cattle. The Matabele had all to gain and 
 nothing to lose by the process — it provided their 
 food without the drawback of labour ; it ' blooded ' 
 the young regiments ; it gave future recruits to the 
 army. The poor Mashona were incapable by nature 
 of offering any resistance, and their disintegration 
 into separate tribes, with no one paramount chief, 
 left them helpless before the disciplined power of 
 the Matabele, with their thousands of fighting men 
 in organised regiments. 
 
 Besides these inroads a few hunters were allowed 
 to go into the country for part of every year ; and 
 one among them, Mr. Selous, bears an honoured 
 
THE n IS HOP'S FIRST JOURNEY. 3 
 
 name for his sympathy and interest in the people. 
 He wrote of them : ' They seem to have but little of 
 the ferocity tliat often forms so marked a feature 
 in uncivilised races. Some eighty years ago this 
 country must have been thickly populated, as almost 
 every valley has at some time been under cultivation. 
 Personally, I like the Mashona better than any other 
 African tribe I have come in contact with,' 
 
 So there Mashonaland lay, filled with the cruelty 
 and fear that reign in most absolutely heathen 
 countries. For the life of these untouched masses is 
 not that state of natural innocence and peace that 
 people affect to think who ' do not beUeve in 
 Missions.' 
 
 Generously supported by the Society for the Pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel, the Bishop of Bloemfontein, 
 Dr. Knight-Bruce, went up in 1888 to get permission 
 from the Matabele chief to go into Mashonaland. 
 He reached Lobengula's kraal in May, and met with 
 great kindness there from the London Society's 
 missionaries, who have been carrying on for fifty 
 years the work Dr. Moffat began among the Matabele. 
 Lobengula delayed as long as possible before giving 
 the Bishop the ' way into Mashonaland,' i.e. per- 
 mission to enter. To go into any native country, 
 in its wild state, without this permission from the 
 ruling chief, almost always leads to grave trouble. 
 A few years before Captain Patterson and his party, 
 attempting to reach the Zambesi on the strength of a 
 very reluctant permission wrung from the chief, were 
 
4 
 
 THE COUNTRY AND 
 
 followed by one of his Indunas (head men) and 
 killed — at least this is the account of their death in 
 Matabeleland. The Bishop writes : ' One hears 
 stories here of darkness and cruelty that make one 
 feel the need of the light of the Gospel. The present 
 chief has recently killed his own favourite sister and 
 brother ; the latter was gaining too much power, 
 and an Induna was sent out to kill him. These royal 
 orders caused no astonishment. " I know what you 
 have come for ; do it quickly," he said at once.' 
 
 Day after day the Bishop went to Lobengula's 
 kraal. Sometimes he was alone, sometimes sur- 
 rounded by his head men ; then he was more difficult 
 to convince. Some of his arguments were quaint : 
 ' I am the proper person to say if the teachers are 
 wanted,' was one. The reason of the delay was 
 obvious : ' He knows, if your Mission settles there, 
 it is good-bye to his raids,' said a trader. However, 
 at last leave was given, and the Bishop started im- 
 mediately — the first missionary who had got into the 
 country. An impi, on its return from raiding, passed 
 him by a silent detour, their ' spoor ' (foot-prints) 
 being seen turning out of the road to avoid a meet- 
 ing. 
 
 The Bishop wrote : ' These impis do not know till 
 they have gone some distance whom they are to 
 attack. A man who had returned from a late raid 
 described how they had surrounded the helpless 
 people, dragged them one by one out of the crowd, 
 and given them one fatal stab with the assegai, till 
 
THE BISHOP'S FJRSr JOURNEY. 
 
 5 
 
 the dead bodies lay in heaps. Sometimes the poor 
 victims were tied up in dry grass and then set on 
 fire. The wives of the late Matabele chief say of 
 him with pride : " He was a king ; he knew kow to 
 kill." What I know now about the Matabele throws 
 a light for me, such as no j)revious argument has 
 done, on God's commands to the Israelites to destroy 
 whole nations.' 
 
 After passing the border into Mashonaland, the 
 Bishop for more than a week met ' witli no man, 
 woman or child ' — not a Mashona was to be seen ; the 
 former population had been killed off or driven away. 
 It was very strange, trekking on through the silent, 
 empty country, the road in places being very 
 beautiful, though generally fiat. A good many rivers 
 were crossed, which the Bishop described : ' All seem 
 to have the same characteristics — sandy or rocky 
 bottoms, steep broken banks, reeds and bushes ; some 
 arc full of crocodiles. We passed very large ant- 
 heaps as we went along, made by the small red ant ; 
 one I measured was about 16 feet high, and another 
 over 80 feet in circumference at the base.' 
 
 The track of the impi was constantly crossed, and 
 presently the town was passed that had just been 
 destroyed. The chief and all the men had been 
 killed, as well as the older women who could not 
 walk; the boys, the younger women, and the cattle 
 had been taken back to Matabelelaud. One poor 
 survivor, either of this or a similar raid, who joined 
 the Bishop had a doleful little song he used to sing 
 
6 
 
 THE COUNTRY AND 
 
 over the camp fires at night : ' I am a great man, and 
 I come from a river ; it is a pity I have not a mate.' 
 Nearly all his family had been killed. 
 
 Further on a place was reached where the 
 waggon had to be left on account of the tsetse fly. 
 Two years later, close to this same spot, the Pioneers 
 ended their march, and it was made the head station 
 of the Chartered Company's government, when it was 
 named Fort Salisbury. 
 
 The Bishop walked on, following the curious 
 native footpaths that lead from one native village 
 to another in an endless chain that, with time and 
 good fortune, would bring one to the Egyptian 
 deserts. Food and guides had to be paid with barter 
 goods, chiefly calico and beads, and this weighty 
 money necessitated carriers — the nightmare and 
 dread of African travel. 
 
 A great many chiefs were visited through all the 
 district up to the Zambesi. They were all faii'ly 
 gracious, but very childish, dirty, and savage. 
 Clothing there was none, till those under Portuguese 
 influence in semi- Arab dress near the river were 
 reached. In one village all the people ran up to the 
 top of a high hill and hid among the rocks, horrified 
 with their glimpse of a white man. 
 
 Their ideas on religion were few and vague. One 
 tribe lived in some awe of an old man on a mountain ; 
 another said their chief knew about heaven and 
 what happened after death, resting satisfied with this 
 delegated faith ; another village had a subterranean 
 
THE BISHOP'S FIRST JOURNEY. 
 
 1 
 
 cavern, apparently treated as sacred, for they would 
 not allow the Bishop, as a white man, to go down to 
 it. His native servant described it as very beautilul, 
 sloping downwards for more than 200 feet to a pool 
 of water extending out of sight, extraordinarily blue 
 in colour and very clear, with stones at the bottom 
 shining with phosphorescent light. Here, too, the men 
 spoke more fully about their religion, saying that 
 God lived in the sky, though once he had lived with 
 them, before the Matabele drove him away ; that God 
 had made them and taught them to sow ; and that 
 they learnt all this from their chief. 
 
 At last the edge of the mountainous upland 
 country was reached, and the broad steamy plain of 
 the Zambesi valley stretched beyond. It took four 
 days' walking to cross, and the Bishop saj's : ' There 
 was at first little of interest in the plain below, but 
 the trees increased in size as we went on. Two 
 human skulls and some bones were lying near the 
 path, the remains probably of natives who had not 
 strength to face the mountains. In the rainy season 
 the ground must be swampy from the length 
 and size of the now dry grass, which is peculiarly 
 strong and unyielding as one walks through it ; one 
 stalk of native corn measured 21 feet high, and 
 the bamboos grow to an extraordinary height.' 
 
 A large chief on the way promised to treat 
 ' teachers ' kindly when they should come, and volun- 
 teered to build them a house. The carriers became 
 more and more troublesome, as natives generally do 
 
THE CO UNTR V A ND 
 
 nearer civilisation, and at last the wearying plain, 
 with its long walk through high sharp grass, was 
 passed, and Ziimbo reached. 
 
 Here the little party should have been met by 
 a young Englishman, Richard Foster, one of the 
 bravest of solitary African travellers. Faithful to 
 his tryst he had been, for the boat in which he had 
 pushed up alone from the mouth of the Zambesi 
 lay on its banks near Zumbo ; from there he had 
 apparently walked on to meet the Bishop, but little 
 further could be learnt of him. The Bishop care- 
 fully traced him to a village near, but found, on 
 questioning the men who had been Foster's guide, 
 that they were ignorant of the places they claimed 
 to have taken him to. The Bishop could only sus- 
 pect foul play ; and this seemed more likely as he 
 passed a skeleton on the road, which his carriers 
 told him was that of a man who had been killed for 
 his beads. But if on that dreary plain a brave soul 
 passed away in the effort to keep a promise, there 
 may be easier deaths we might care less to die. 
 
 After a few days the Bishop went on down the 
 river in a boat. He says : 
 
 ' The boat was heavy, the paddles small, the 
 men lazy, but the stream strong. The boats 
 generally used are hollowed-out trees, and are 
 sometimes more than 30 feet in length. To make 
 these canoes with the tools at their disposal argues 
 both patience, ingenuity, and perseverance on the 
 part of the natives. As they paddle they frequently 
 
THE BISHOP'S FIRST JOURNEY. 
 
 9 
 
 sing ; the director starts them, and repeats the words 
 while the others sing a chorus. The tunes are simple 
 and monotonous, but one wislies they would sing less 
 and row more. Though there is httle of beauty in 
 this part of the Zambesi, it is strange and very 
 interesting from the immense reaches, where the 
 river widens out with sandbanks and shallows, the 
 large volume of water that pours down, and the 
 strength of the current. As it was getting dark 
 to-day, the boat ran on a sandbank, while a huge 
 hippopotamus watched us. The crocodiles and mos- 
 quitoes are very numerous, and the latter have an 
 unusually painful bite. The water is peculiarly soft 
 and very warm, its temperature at sunrise being 
 60°. At one spot there were some very hot springs 
 near the bank, tasting strongly of iron. Two of the 
 men gave one a good idea to-day of the " slow length " 
 of native conversation. They had been talking for 
 a long time already when I noticed the narrator 
 paused shghtiy at the end of every sentence, when his 
 friend said, " Eh." I then counted these sentences, 
 and reached number 217 before the history of some 
 corn and an ox came to an end. 
 
 ' No one who has not had dealings with the really 
 heathen native can credit what a degradation of 
 humanity they are. To live somewhat intimately 
 among them is the best refutation of the belief that 
 heathen natives are better than Christian, and is the 
 strongest argument for the necessity of raising them.' 
 
 After seventy miles down the river the Bishop 
 
io 
 
 THE COUNTRY AND 
 
 landed to walk through fresh country back to his 
 waggon. Some great chiefs were visited on the way, 
 who generally showed a certain amount of interest in 
 hearing of a ' larger Faith,' and wished for teachers. 
 The other incidents of the walk were donkeys dying 
 from the tsetse-fly bites, men down with fever, and 
 some forced marches to reach water. All were 
 
 KOCKY VILLAGE, NEAR THE MISSION, THE SCENE OF A GAZA MASSACRE. \ „/''''""• " , 
 
 \_Photoijrin>h. 
 
 glad when the forty days' walk of 535 miles was 
 over, and the waggon reached. Another large 
 detour was then made to the east and south of 
 Mashonaland ; and here it was sad to see the effects 
 of the terror in which these poor peaceable people 
 lived. Their little huts were crowded in among the 
 rocks on the tops of the hills, perched there more 
 
THE BISHOP'S FIRS T JO URNE Y. 1 1 
 
 like birds' nests than lionses, with difficult Httle paths, 
 blocked witli rocks and walls, leading up to tliem. 
 All comfort and cleanliness were sacrificed in hope 
 of safety from the Matabele. 
 
 The most southerly point was reached at Sipiro's 
 Mountain, where the chief behaved very well ; and as 
 tribute was being collected from him by the Gaza 
 people at the time, he sent to strongly advise the 
 Bishop to remain behind a mountain till the pro- 
 ceeding was over, for fear the Gaza collectors might 
 include him among their vassals. 
 
 After four months in the country the pioneer 
 journey came to an end, and, very hopeful as to the 
 future of mission work among the people, the Bishop 
 returned to the Free State. The distance travelled 
 was about 2,500 miles, and the map of the journey 
 was published by the Geographical Society. Nearly 
 all his own men for the journey had been carefully 
 chosen Christian natives. Not a moment's trouble 
 had been caused by any of them ; when others were 
 tipsy, they were sober ; when others grumbled at 
 hardships and privations, they were patient and 
 willing. It was after no summer day's excursion 
 that the Bishop was able to say : 
 
 ' Upon the question of native servants who are 
 not Christian being better than those that are, I can 
 only speak from my own experience. If I had 
 another difficult journey to do I should try to take 
 with me only Christians.' 
 
ii 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 INTEODUCTION — continued. 
 
 THE OCCUPATION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 The Mashonaland of 1888 passed suddenly away. 
 Africa developed gold fever, growing delirious over 
 the Transvaal and restless everywhere. Men saw 
 nuggets under every ridge, and but one danger — 
 that of others digging them out. Mashonaland sand 
 and Mashonaland quartz had specks of yellow, and 
 the clever and sceptical world of the nineteenth 
 century was as ready as the world of Queen 
 Elizabeth to start for another golden city of Manoa. 
 
 Sounder judgment saw wider vistas. The coun- 
 try was high, fever might be stamped out, the rivers 
 were numerous and their clear water ran all the 
 year, the soil was plainly very fertile, and there 
 seemed every hope for a prosperous colony. The 
 Prime Minister of the Cape, Mr. Cecil Ehodes, had 
 learnt from General Gordon to believe in the colo- 
 nising office of ' God's Englishmen,' and Mashonaland 
 seemed to him a fair country to add to England's 
 landlordship. Very quickly he obtained the con- 
 cession of mining rights over all the land from the 
 Matabele chief ; formed the South African Chartered 
 Company, and sent up their Pioneer force to take 
 possession, which it did with peace and success. 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF THE COUNTRY. 13 
 
 'I'hree clergy accompanied the men as chaplains. 
 ( )iie of these, to the great regret of his troop, died 
 from the effects of the climate near Fort Tuli ; 
 another returned ; and Canon Balfour still remains 
 in charge of the police and of Fort Salisbury, having 
 shared all the hardships of the early settlement. 
 
 The Pioneers were followed by many others, and 
 the influx of white men made the development of the 
 Church's work a more immediate necessity. The 
 African Bishops constituted Mashonaland into a 
 separate missionary diocese, of which they asked 
 Bishop Knight-Bruce to undertake the charge ; and 
 tlie Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, with 
 the quick practical insight that had enabled the 
 work to be begun two years before, granted £1,000 
 annually for seven years, and Mr. Rhodes gave £500. 
 On this sole support the Mission started forward. 
 
 The Bishop gathered together a little party, in- 
 eluding some lay workers, three ladies (certificated 
 nurses) who volunteered for work in one of the Com- 
 pany's hospitals, and five excellent native Christians, 
 who were eventually to act as Catechists, their own 
 language being somewhat akin to that of the Mashona. 
 
 The first difficulty was how to get themselves into 
 the diocese ; the second, and very far greater one, was 
 how to get in their necessary supplies. Goats, sheep, 
 and Kaffir meal might be obtainable from the natives, 
 or possibly, if the Mission funds were able to afford it, 
 a high-priced cow for milk. But this would be all ; 
 and the native supplies had been heavily taxed and 
 
14 THE OCCUPATION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 J 
 
 absorbed by the immigrants of the past year. It is 
 perhaps hard to realise in England what the con- 
 ditions of life must be in a native country as yet 
 untouched by trade. 
 
 There were three routes available : one was the 
 long tedious waggon journey up through Bechuana- 
 land and Matabeleland, that might take any time 
 from two and a half months to five ; another was 
 the slightly shorter waggon journey up through the 
 Transvaal, and then on ; tlie third sounded almost 
 European in speed and comfort, with its coast 
 steamer to the mouth of the Pungwe Eiver, its river 
 steamer for fifty miles inland, and then its coaches for 
 passengers and waggons for stores over a road for the 
 remaining 140 miles straight into Mashonaland. 
 
 The road was made ; the coaches, waggons, oxen, 
 liarness all prepared. There seemed in April one 
 difficulty only remaining, namely, the refusal of the 
 Portuguese to give the road in through their 
 possessions, as they held, rightly or wrongly, that 
 the Chartered Company had gravely infringed upon 
 their border, and pushed the boundary of Mashona- 
 land beyond any lawful limit. But, through the wise 
 and just decision of Lord Salisbury, the Portuguese 
 were appeased, and this difficulty was ended. 
 
 The first steamer was to go up the Pungwe early 
 in May, and by it the Bishop decided to push into 
 his diocese with his Christian natives and the year's 
 supply of medicines and stores, leaving the nurses 
 under competent care to follow by the next steamer 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF THE COUNTRY. 15 
 
 At this point the Bisliop's journal begins ; but, in 
 order to understand all the difficulties tliat met liini, 
 it may be as well to say at once that this route 
 became for the time an utter failure. Men and 
 brains and money were beaten by flies. A belt of 
 country at least sixty miles across, stretching inland 
 from the Pungwe, is haunted by a little insect, 
 browny-grey in colour, the size of a small horse-fly, 
 with wings crossed over its back, known as the 
 tsetse fly. It lives on game ; when its larder leaves 
 the country the tsetse fly follows, and at present 
 there is no other known deliverance. The most 
 delicate skinned antelope suffers no more from its 
 bite than the thick-hided bufl^alo, but to any domestic 
 animal it means death. No visible mark is made, 
 but the poor beast withers away, often with all the 
 symptoms of a snake bite, losing strength and flesh, 
 till, if it has not died before, it dies after the first 
 rain. When skinned the flesh shows livid circles 
 round each puncture. Men apparently do not suffer 
 at all, though Mr. Selous believes that in the Zambesi 
 "Valley, where the fly swarms, their bites aggravate 
 the attacks of fever. Be that as it may, the tsetse 
 fly worked its wicked will on the Pungwe route, 
 and soon, instead of oxen and waggons, there were 
 waggons and hides. 
 
 Carriers were the only remaining hope for the 
 stores and building materials ; but carriers, at least 
 in the Zanzibar sense, hardly exist on this coast. 
 Those employed by the Portuguese are generally 
 
\6 THE OCCUPATION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 imported, under a contract to work for no one else. 
 There remain the few local natives who can be 
 laboriously collected together, and bribed by high 
 payment to undertake the inland journey. 
 
 But though these difficulties must be told, it 
 would be unfair to give the impression either that 
 they are greater than those many another young 
 colony has had to meet, and has met and grown out 
 of, or that the Chartered Company is not doing its 
 utmost for the healthy development of the country. 
 Two clauses in its Charter follow high precedents, 
 and follow them at the cost of profit. One binds the 
 Company to discourage, and by degrees abolish, any 
 system of slave trade or domestic servitude in its 
 territories ; the other forbids entirely the sale of in- 
 toxicating liquor or spirits to any native. 
 
 As for all the rest, the difficulties of this far in- 
 land mission must be very great ; in many ways far 
 greater than those at home can realise, or those who 
 go through them care to dwell on. But difficulties 
 were never made by Christ into an exceptional clause 
 in His great command, and the claim of the poor 
 Mashona stands on a line with that of the most culti- 
 vated European ; both are laid alike on every Christian 
 Church whose commission is to ' preach the Gospel to 
 every creature . ' England raised a million in a few weeks 
 to work Mashonaland gold, and sent out numbers of 
 men for every available post ; how much will England 
 give in prayer and help and dedicated life to work for 
 the Golden Harvest that Angel Hands will garner ? 
 
17 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE bishop's journal, 1891. 
 
 On May 12th we reached Beira Bay. It is so large 
 that as we steam in we can only just see the mouth 
 of the Punsfwe river in the distance. The land looks 
 flat in every direction — indeed the spit of sand on 
 which Beira itself is built looks as if it would 
 disappear under a high tide. There was a delay of 
 three days here, transhipping stores, &c., and then 
 we went up the Pungwe in a small river steamer. It 
 is very broad at its mouth, with mangrove swamps 
 on both sides. The following day we spent on a 
 sandbank, not getting off till the evening, when we 
 went on for a mile and then stuck again, remaining 
 there all night and the next day, which was Sunday. 
 Late in the evening, when nearly every atom of cargo 
 had been removed, we floated oflf, but stuck twice 
 again. 
 
 I went to the two lighters that were following 
 our steamer to try and have Service for the natives 
 on board, but found them being towed along by 
 some fifty men in the water, and the shouting and 
 holloaing made any service impossible. There are 
 about a hundred natives on the lighters going up for 
 road-making in Mashonaland, and their overseers 
 (white men) tell me ' they are an admirable lot,' and I 
 
 Q 
 
1 8 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 gathered from t heir behaviour at our Service together 
 last Sunday that they must nearly all be Christians. 
 
 Higher up still, we reached the Portuguese 
 settlement of Nevez Ferreira. I landed, and was most 
 hospitably received by the Portuguese Commandant, 
 who showed me their little hospital, consisting of a 
 long tent and a smaller one, in which I found a man 
 from North Wales whom they had been nursing for 
 some time. He had tried to get into the Manica 
 country with a companion, who died, and he himself 
 was brought back very ill. 
 
 Later on a new relay of Portuguese soldiers arrived, 
 and I was surprised at being merely glared at by one 
 of their officers when I saluted him. His arm was in 
 a sling, and then I saw there were other arms in 
 slings, and that the soldiers about all seemed in a 
 very much less friendly mood than in the morning. 
 The new contingent had brought bad news from 
 Massi-Kessi of a fight with the Chartered Company's 
 police a week ago ; three of the Portuguese are 
 reported to have been killed, and these are the 
 wounded men. 
 
 Orders were sent to our steamer to wait below 
 the village, and our consequent relief was great when 
 we saw the English Vice-Consul from Beira coming 
 up in his boat. After he had seen the Commandant 
 we were allowed to go on to our final point on the 
 river, 'Mpanda's village, but to go no further till 
 instructions came up from Beira. This means a delay 
 of forty-eight hours at least, I was also told the 
 
THE niSnOP'S JOURNAL, TSUI. 
 
 19 
 
 natives liave been forbidden to carry for the En<flisli, 
 and tliat the men I liave engaged lower down tlio 
 river will probably not be allowed to come up. 
 
 May 2()t/(. — Here we are, still some distance from 
 'Mpanda's. I went to have our midday meal with 
 the Vice-Consul. 
 
 May 2lst. — The first trans])ort boat reached 
 'Mpanda's and unloaded. I had brought a note up 
 
 for a white man called L who had preceded us, 
 
 but I found he had died a few days ago ; I suppose 
 from fever. It is certainly a fever-stricken place to 
 look at. Towards the morning there is a thick mist 
 rising from the river ; the trees and reeds grow down 
 the banks right into the water, and the whole 
 vegetation is rank. The natives have chosen slightly 
 rising ground here and there for their little villages, 
 and near one of these I pitched my tents. The steam 
 launch has come back from Beira, with orders that 
 Major Sapte, carrying instructions from the Governor, 
 is to go on at once, with his companion, so as to give 
 definite orders to the Chartered Company's police to 
 evacuate Massi-Kessi ; and that I may go on if I like 
 at my own risk ; but that the rest are to remain here. 
 
 I can get no carriers, so I shall try to get on 
 without them. I asked my five native Christians if 
 they woidd carry five light loads, and they were very 
 willing ; so during the night I put together some 
 biscuits, a few tins of meat, some clothes, &c., and 
 was ready to start at 6 a.m. Major Sapte had left 
 the day before, and I intended to start with the 
 
 c? 
 
20 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL. 1891 
 
 Portuguese officer who had been sent up to accom- 
 pany him, but who was too late to do so. However, 
 this morning his carriers have run away, as they were 
 said to have been beaten, and I found the only one 
 left, a poor creature tied hand and foot with a rope. 
 
 Eventually he and I and my natives started with a 
 guide, intending to reach the chief Makanguela. We 
 walked for an hour and a half, and then found that the 
 officer's guide was taking us in exactly the opposite 
 direction, so we made for the nearest place we could, 
 which proved to be the Nevez Ferreira we had passed 
 on our way up the river. The Commandant most 
 kindly fed us, and I then arranged for my men to 
 start the next morning for Makanguela's again, while 
 I and the Portuguese officer went up the river with 
 the luggage in his boat past 'Mpanda's to meet them 
 there. 
 
 The natives of this country speak a kind of Zulu, 
 though their habits and character are more like 
 those of the Mashona, but they are not in the least 
 like them in face. Though they live on a river, they 
 certainly don't understand boats as the men did who 
 took me down the Zambesi. As I write we are being 
 punted along by a crew of four, and very feebly are 
 they doing it. However, the Portuguese officer is 
 contented, and he is by way of going up as fast as 
 possible. 
 
 May 24:th. — Twenty-six hours were we in that 
 boat, and I think that we ran aground at least thirty 
 times. Now we are at Makanguela's, 
 
THlL BISHOP'S JOURNAL, ISOl. 
 
 2t 
 
 May 2^th. — The five admirable natives liavc 
 walked liere, so they and I vritli another guide start 
 this morning, leaving the officer to wait for some men 
 to carry him. The grass was very wet, and a long 
 swamp we had to go tli rough was worse. The guide 
 left us when we were on the track for Sarmento, and 
 we walked on till, just as it was growing dark, we 
 came to a native village. The people here were 
 Banzai ; they were very hospitable, and gave us two 
 fowls. When I spoke to them they said they had 
 never had a teacher, and afterwards when we had 
 our Prayers they seemed much amused. 
 
 May 'lUh. — Early this morning we reached Sar- 
 mento, and found the Portuguese official most polite ; 
 he gave me a guide, but could not give carriers as he 
 had given them all to Major Sapte, who had preceded 
 us. We walked for about nine and a half hours with 
 only a very few rests. The men said they could do 
 without cooking food till the evening ; but in the 
 great heat and with only a little biscuit to eat they 
 overtasked themselves, and one of them, Bernard, 
 nearly fainted, so I carried his load for the last part 
 of the journey. There is no water at the place 
 where we sleep to-night, but happily we have brought 
 a little with us. 
 
 May 27th. — We reached some water this morn- 
 ing after two hours' walking, then two hours further 
 on we caught up Major Sapte, walked all day with 
 him, and slept at a Portuguese camp considerably 
 further on our way. Here I found an Englishman, 
 
±2 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, ISOl. 
 
 said to be dying of fever, who had been twelve days 
 coming here from Sarmento, and had lain out in the 
 woods for two nights before he was picked up, quite 
 delirious, by a Portuguese party. I think if he can 
 be carried down to the Pungwe, and then sent on to 
 Beira and Natal, that he may recover. This has been 
 arranged for. I have strained my left foot, and 
 walking has become very painful. Though we have 
 come a long way since leaving the river, there still 
 seems a great deal of fever, and the official at Sar- 
 mento told me it was ' normal.' 
 
 As we walk on the whole country is changing. 
 There is still the high grass, sometimes two feet 
 above our heads, which in the narrow footpath when 
 it is very wet in the morning is most annoying ; 
 but the dead level of featureless country is left be- 
 hind, and I begin to recognise the same trees that 
 grow in Mashonaland. The country is practically 
 uninhabited ; now and then at great distances apart 
 there are native villages, but everywhere else is this 
 wide sea of grass, The five natives are walking and 
 carrying most admirably, doing long journeys every 
 day. 
 
 May 2Sth. — To-day we have made a very long 
 march. In the middle of the day I was able to hire 
 five carriers, and so relieve my men. We started at 
 6.1-5 A.M., and stopped at five in the evening, going 
 very fast and only taking short rests. All the way 
 the ground was steadily rising, and now we seem to 
 have got out of the heavy night mists, and the air is 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 18D1. 
 
 23 
 
 very difl'erent. We have left Major Sapte, and sleej) 
 near some bad water to-night. 
 
 May 29//t. — We started earl}- and walked ibr 
 • about three hours, when suddenly a rille and a black 
 soldier appeared, and told us to stoj). 1 waved my 
 Portuguese letter to the Conunandant at liini, as 
 he looked as if he meant to be unpleasant, but 
 after some delay he took us througli the sentries 
 to the Major in command at Shemoio's village. 
 The Major was most polite, gave me an excellent 
 breakfast, and a su])ply of food for me and the men 
 for at least three days. He wanted me to be 
 carried when we went on, but I thought I coidd 
 still walk, and only engaged six carriers for the 
 loads. 
 
 The luitive carriers are very irritating to deal 
 with, and it is almost impossible to believe that 
 these poor, stupid, noisy, smelling creatures come 
 from almost the same part of Africa as did my five 
 Christian natives, and that Christianity and educa- 
 tion have apparently changed them into a different 
 creation. Certainly, if a man can keep his temper 
 with these native carriers he can keep it with 
 nearly anyone. 
 
 We met a stream of sick people belonging tc 
 the Portuguese going down to the sea, and I heard 
 the whole story of the destruction of Massi-Kessi. 
 The Portuguese here believed the Company's police 
 were there now — seventy miles away ; but I had 
 hardly left Shemoio's, and gone through the gardens 
 
' — ) 
 
 24 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 (cultivated land) outside the Portuguese settlement, 
 when to our mutual astonishment an officer of the 
 Chartered Company, the Hon. E. Wickham Fiennes, 
 and I came face to face. He was reconnoitring * 
 with one of his men, and an attack on the camp 
 which I had just left had been arranged for to- 
 morrow morning. I told him that Major Sapte was 
 coming up with instructions for the Company to 
 retire out of Massi-Kessi, and as this was much to 
 the east of Massi-Kessi, and consequently in Por- 
 tuguese territory, now that an agreement had been 
 made, he decided not to attack. I was very glad I 
 had walked fast, as the Portuguese camp, except for 
 the officers and a few others, was full of a sickly 
 looking lot of men, who to-morrow morning would 
 probably have been scattered ; and as I had just 
 left, laden with their hospitahty and kindness, it 
 would have been painful to know they were being 
 attacked by an English police force. We slept at 
 Mr. Fiennes' camp, and I scribbled a note to the 
 Portuguese officer, giving him my word that I did 
 not know of the force being there. 
 
 May 30^A. — W e started very early ; and Mr. 
 Fiennes lent me a horse. We had a long, very un- 
 interesting journey all day, and slept near a broad 
 brook. Nearly every night we reach one of the 
 grass ' shelters ' put up by Portuguese parties on 
 their road to Massi-Kessi, which are an improvement 
 on the open ground. 
 
 May ^ist. — We nearly reached Massi Kessi. The 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 25 
 
 country lierc is terribly liilly, and the immediate 
 prospect of a road to the Pungwe river seems small. 
 There have been scarcely any villages along the 
 road, but now we see a few huts dotted over the 
 mountains. I found some carriers for to-morrow, as 
 my own men are not fit to carry further, and slept in 
 a native grain-barn, which was a great luxury. ~ 
 
 Ju7ie 1st. — We passed Massi-Kessi this morning, 
 the place where the fight lately took place ; it is 
 burnt and empty. I took a boy as a guide and went 
 ahead of the carriers. The road was very beautiful 
 but verj^ steep, and quite impassable for waggons. 
 We went over a pass quite 6,000 feet high, and near 
 it are hollows in which bananas and innumerable wild 
 flowers were growing. In the afternoon we reached 
 the Umtali camp ; some of my men stayed behind 
 and slept at a village on the road, as they were too 
 tired to come on. 
 
 June 2nd. — Major Sapte arrived, I offered his 
 carriers £2 each and their food to go back to 
 'Mpanda's and bring up the hospital nurses in chairs 
 and twelve loads of provisions, but they refused ; so 
 I sent down a letter by them with instructions in the 
 hoj)e it might be delivered, if the nurses had arrived 
 at 'Mpanda's. 
 
 June bth, Friday. — -I held a Service for the men, 
 when the best hut we could find was packed with a 
 congregation of forty to fifty. I was very unwell, and 
 hardly knew what I said. The doctor told me after- 
 wards it was fever, and sent me to bed with quinine. 
 
26 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1S91. 
 
 However, it was a mild attack, as the next mornins 
 I could start in a ])olice waggon for Fort Salisbury. 
 It was not a pleasant journey : the oxen were bad 
 and the driver ill. 
 
 June Till, Sunday. — When we stopped at a post 
 hut I gathered nearly all the men for Service. An 
 uncomfortable Sunday ended in a vain attempt to get 
 our poor oxen through the river Odzi. The next 
 day after some difficulty the waggon got through, 
 and we trekked on. Near Massi-Kessi I heard of two 
 men living alone in a hut, one of whom died, while 
 the other was too weak to do more than crawl away 
 from his dead friend to another hut near. They 
 could not be reached at hrst because the river was 
 in Hood, till Mr. Fiennes very bravely swam across 
 and buried the dead man. Poor Pattison, with 
 whom I have stayed when he was a trader in 
 Basutoland, was found dead alone in his hut, in the 
 northern part of Mashonaland. I am very anxious 
 about the nurses, who must be now at 'Mpanda's, and 
 have again sent directions for them to be carried up 
 in chairs. If one could only have foreseen that this 
 advertised line of communication was not to succeed, 
 one would have arranged some very different journey 
 for them, and I would certainly not have come up, 
 leaving our provisions behind at the coast. I offered 
 a man £1 for half a bottle of Elliman's embrocation, 
 but he strongly preferred the embrocation to the £'1, 
 as one might be replaced, the other not. 
 
 June lO^A. — The waggon is too slow to be endured, 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, IS!) I 
 
 SO I started to walk the remaining 120 miles to Fort 
 Balisbury, taking one carrier and two of my own 
 natives. We trusted to getting native food on the way, 
 and only took a little coffee, tea, &c., with us. Every 
 twelve miles or so there is a hut where a half-caste 
 or native lives to take care of the oxen for the ho})ed- 
 for post ; we walked eleven miles to one and slept 
 near it. There was not a sign of human life along 
 the road except the grass huts put up by a road 
 party. There is a great chief, Maconi, living about 
 six miles away, where I shall try to put a Mission, 
 and have sent him a message by the trooper, Trevor, 
 who is stationed there. This man takes a great 
 interest in missionary work, and as the chief can 
 understand what he says, this may be a good be- 
 ginning. The nights are bitterly cold at this height, 
 and the dew is heavy. 
 
 June ] 1th. — We started at dawn, and walked about 
 fifteen miles. Two of the boys were ill and had to 
 rest ; while we were waiting, Father Hartman, the 
 Eoman Cathohc priest from Fort Salisbury, caught 
 us up. At a native's hut on the road I bought eight 
 ship's biscuits for 45. Then we started by moon- 
 light again, and walked on till nine o'clock ; it was 
 beautiful. Thirty miles farther back we could not 
 have done this, as the lions there use the road a good 
 deal, and might have caused trouble, as we had no 
 riile with us ; there we saw the ' spoor ' of a very 
 large lion walking towards the waggon. A white 
 man is supposed to have been taken off by lions, and 
 
28 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 
 
 not far from here another was thrown on the 
 ground by a lion jumping out of the bush at his 
 horse. 
 
 June \2th. — We started before sunrise, when it 
 is cold but deUghtfully fresli, and walked for about 
 twenty miles ; the sand is heavy at times, and later in 
 the day the sun is very hot. We go on over a sandy 
 plain with scarcely a tree, and not very much water, 
 and to-night we are about sixty miles from Fort 
 Salisbury. I never felt so weak during a walk be- 
 fore ; it was the food, I suppose, or the want of it ; so 
 the next day I broke into my handful of sick stores, 
 after which I walked better. We passed the first 
 village of any size on the road, belonging to the chiel 
 Morondella. Father Hartman rested in the heat, and 
 I walked on with my natives ; and after we stopped 
 we spent the half-hour before dark in finding water 
 and collecting boughs for shelter. So long as one is 
 alone with the Masliona, there is scarcely anything 
 which they will not do. 
 
 June lith. — We started nearly an hour before 
 sunrise, and met two men with oxen going down to 
 'Mpanda's to try to fetch up the coaches. They have 
 300 miles to go, and at least 100 miles of new road 
 to make. Shortly afterwards Father Hartman had 
 an attack of fever, but happily I had quinine with 
 me, so later he was able to walk on. The road went 
 through some bad bogs, but we slept near a beautiful 
 river. The delight of coming to these running streams 
 after a long day's walk in the sun is inexpressible. 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 29 
 
 June 15t//. — We started an liour before sunrise, 
 and reached Fort Salisbury before midday. We had 
 walked the 1 20 miles (as it is reckoned) in five days, 
 but then we had had four most admirable Mashona 
 to carry our few things for us. 
 
 Fort Salisbury is on rising ground, but, I think, 
 too close to a small marsh. It is a collection of huts, 
 chiefly native-built ; those for the hospital, for the 
 Administrator, and for the police lie in blocks near 
 each other. About a mile away is a small hill, where 
 the traders live, chiefly in their waggons. I hoped to 
 meet Canon Balfour, but he is very rightly away on a 
 visit to the Europeans who are gold-prospecting on 
 the Mazoe river : and with the ever-moving camps it 
 is hard to provide ministrations for them. 
 
 Jime 16th. — I am delighted to have got here ; the 
 Administrator is most kind, and offers me everything 
 I can possibly want for our work. I am arranging 
 with him to have our hospital at Umtali, with our 
 Mission farm up the valley at the back. It seems to 
 be the most perfect place in the country, with, per- 
 haps, the least fever : a good centre of a very large 
 native population, probably close to future gold-camps 
 and a white settlement, and nearest to the sea, and 
 therefore in the future most convenient for the transport 
 of all necessaries. Indeed, the future of the Mission, 
 under God's blessing, seems, by a concurrence of 
 circumstances, to be opening unexpectedly brightly, 
 considering the difficulties around. There were 52 
 inches of rain during the wet season this year. 
 
30 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1S91. 
 
 On going to visit the hospital I met Canon Bal- 
 four at a cross-path, coming back from the Mazoe 
 river. He is very well, in spite of his year of 
 hardships. 
 
 June 17th. — The Enghsh mail went, so I sent a 
 short report to the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel. In the evening I went through the hospital, 
 and found our waggon-driver from Umtali down there 
 with fever. I had a long talk with Canon Balfour on 
 starting a Mission at Unyamwenda's, a large native 
 chief about sixteen miles from here ; he and his people 
 liad received me very well three years ago, and 
 promised to build a house for a teacher when one 
 came. 
 
 June ISth. — Mr. Borrow has very kindly lent me 
 the only available horse he has, and I have had to buy 
 another, a salted one. The price is terrible, but a 
 horse is a necessity if I am to do much work during 
 the next few months in the way of visiting the 
 chiefs, arranging places for our Missions, finding 
 timber, labour, &c., for the buildings. There are 
 only seven months to be reckoned on for work in the 
 year ; the other five are the rainy season, when little 
 can be done. Every day now is of the greatest impor- 
 tance to get huts up, sites chosen, wood and grass for 
 the thatch brought in before November. 
 
 I visited the hospital, seeing a poor man — the last 
 of a party of three. One died on the road up, one 
 died in hospital, and he is going back as soon as 
 possible. Spent the evening with Major Forbes, 
 
THE ni SHOP'S JOURNAL, lS9t 
 
 31 
 
 arran<?ing my journey back I0 Unitali round by tlie 
 (Treat cliiefs of tlic district. 
 
 June 19th. — Arranged with Canon Balfour tluit 
 he should visit three more great chiefs beyond 
 Unyamwenda's, I guaranteeing every expense and 
 promising £25 for an interpreter out of our funds. 
 Then went to the hospital, and found there a man who 
 has his wife in the country ; the poor thing has had 
 fever on and off for four months. Another man had 
 ridden in on a donkey, doing thirty miles in thirteen 
 days. 
 
 The kindness of the officers and of the officials 
 of the Chartered Company here is delightful beyond 
 words. No news has been heard from the coast since 
 we came up. 
 
 Sunday, June 21st. — Holy Communion and Service 
 at eleven. Canon Balfour has built an excellent little 
 church with trees, mud, and thatch ; there were a 
 fair number of people. At three o'clock I had Service 
 at the traders' camp, about a mile away ; and another 
 at the hospital at 4.30. In the evening I joined 
 Canon Balfour for Service in his hut at eight o'clock, 
 when a few faithful ones were present. 
 
 June 22nd. — I had intended to start very early, 
 but there was more to arrange than I expected, 
 and by the time I could get off I had fever, and the 
 doctor sent me to ' bed.' It has been most happy 
 that both my fever attacks have been at camps where 
 there was a hut to go to. 
 
 June 2^rd. — I started as soon as I could in the 
 
32 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 morning, and went on till an hour and a half after 
 sunset. 'With me are two of my Christian men, three 
 carriers, and two horses. We slept with a delightful 
 native at a station. He is one of Khame's men from 
 Bechuanaland. 
 
 June 2ith. — One of my men is too ill with fever 
 to move ; so after giving him as much quinine as I 
 dared, I left him with a further supply of it, and of 
 money with the man to send him on when possible. 
 Certainly sitting on a horse in a blazing sun with a 
 bad head for nine hours seems to make one conscious 
 of one's own weakness and the length of a day, and 
 not till sundown did we reach a village. It was 
 Undzi's — one of the most picturesque in the country, 
 rising from a swamp ; but on the dry side banana trees 
 are growing, and the heap of rocks there are one mass 
 of huts and trees. I remembered the doctor's advice in 
 choosing places for Missions: 'Beware of picturesque 
 sites.' The dirt was great. I went as high as I could 
 above their houses, and crawled through a hole into 
 their kind of fortress, but in the dirt it was difficult to 
 find a spot to lie down on. I bought food for the 
 men and horses, and told the chief what I came for ; 
 but their interest in one ceases after one has bought 
 all one wants. 
 
 Jime 2'jth. — We passed a village where there 
 had just been a fight. It is characteristic that three 
 women, but only two men, had been wounded ; but 
 I believe that if these Masliona could have judicious 
 rule, and were educated by Christianity out of their 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 
 
 33 
 
 slavish qualities of lying and cowardice, and some add 
 thieving, they would make a very intelligent nation. 
 They have never stolen anything from me ; but this 
 evening, on reaching Maguendi's village, where two 
 troopers live, they told me their things had been 
 taken. The thief had escaped, but the chief, on being 
 appealed to, had taken the man's wife and family. 
 This is not so terrible a hostage as might be supposed. 
 I passed a village a short way back where a man had 
 had two wives taken by the Matabele, but he did not 
 feel it very severely. We are now coming back to 
 the hilly country, and find a village which is as pretty 
 to look at as it is dirty. I told the people a teacher 
 would come to them. When we got to the post 
 station at Maguendi's, I sent a message and a present 
 to the chief. He sent word that he would come to- 
 morrow morning with his headmen. There are a 
 large number of villages round under this chief. 
 There is the dearest little Mashona boy here, who 
 gives one hopes of the whole people, and visions of a 
 Mission filled with boys before they have learnt much 
 from their own race. These Mashona have, I am 
 sure, the makings of a very superior people in them, 
 but every noble quality seems to have been crushed 
 by their long state of terror under the Matabele raids. 
 
 The height of this hill I make to be 4,800 feet. 
 The native village is still higher, a long way from the 
 river ; but to live among the rocks the Mashona will 
 sacrifice even a good water-supply. 
 
 June 2Qth. — Maguendi sent a message to say he 
 
 o 
 
34 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 liad a bad leg, so I went to see him. Our interview 
 lasted nearly two hours ; he expressed himself very 
 glad to have a teacher, and called out his head wife 
 to hear the news. 
 
 "We arranged that I should build a hut and keep 
 a teacher — European or native — here. Then he 
 wanted to send a message to the Queen. It was 
 somewhat as follows : — 
 
 ' Maguendi is very sorry, but he is too old to go 
 and see the great Queen. Maguendi would like to 
 send the great Queen an ox or a cow.' 
 
 Poor chief ! Again, as I was leaving, he asked 
 when he should send the ox to the great Queen. 
 
 The trust of these native races in the unknown 
 English Queen seems inborn : it is very touching, 
 and fills one, as the trust of a child does, with a wish 
 to respond rightly to their faith . 
 
 Maguendi lives on a mountain, about three- 
 quarters of a mile in length. When I left him I 
 climbed about it for some time trying to choose 
 a site for a Mission, but saw nothing sufficiently 
 near to water. Eventually I settled on a small 
 plateau among the rocks, facing the setting sun, 
 sheltered from the wind, with a most beautiful 
 view over the brook at the bottom, and very high. 
 This should be as free from fever as any place ; so 
 I roughly surveyed a piece of ground near the 
 plateau, so that, should the chief's power ever be 
 taken away, and this country be made into farms, 
 the Mission would have this land, which could be a 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 35 
 
 kind of Reserve for the natives. It has been a hard 
 day's work, but the success lias been dehghtful, and 
 I arranged to have one large Mission hut built for 
 three pieces of calico and some beads. 
 
 In the evening I had prayers with one of the 
 troopers, who had been ill with fever ; the other one 
 has been down all day with a relapse of fever, and 
 next morning I confirmed him, and then travelled on 
 till after sunset. We were happy in getting good 
 food on the road. There are some hills near here, 
 on which natives live, that are almost perfect ready- 
 made fortresses ; but neither these nor their artificial 
 fortifications seem to have saved the Mashona, when 
 the attack came, from the Gaza or Matabele raids. 
 
 June — We reached the police huts early ; 
 they are four miles from the chief Maconi. We 
 seem to have done nearly fifty miles in two days 
 and a bit. Frank, the native left behind with 
 fever, had rejoined us by a Scotch cart. The 
 trooper here, Trevor, has done remarkably well in 
 giving my message to the chief, and speaking to him 
 about it. He and his people have since been going 
 through some heathen rite to ascertain whether or 
 no they ought to receive a teacher. To-night 
 Maconi sent a message to say he was sending me an 
 ox as a present. 
 
 June ^Oth. — We went up early to try and find 
 Maconi sober, but were disappointed. The village 
 is large and dirty, and the path to his quarter winds 
 about among rocks and huts. We found about 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 thirty of the chief men collected round him, and I 
 explained what I wanted to do. But after a great 
 deal of noise we found that nothing satisfactory could 
 be done, and we left. I proposed building a hut 
 about four miles from here, as there are many 
 villages around where a catechist could visit the 
 people, and I mapped out a piece of ground for a 
 future Mission here, when the chief should change 
 his mind, or a different regime begin. We walked for 
 nearly three hours, but were not much pleased with 
 any special site. I left Bernard, one of my cate- 
 chists, to go back to Maguendi's, and Frank, another, 
 to stay near here, giving them all the barter goods 
 that could be spared to provide their food with. It 
 is the day of small things, but missionary work with 
 two important chiefs has been at least begun, and 
 will accomplish what God wills it should. 
 
 I left the chief's ox as food for my men, and 
 rode on with three Mashona towards Umtali, about 
 fifty-five miles away. We passed many villages and 
 many suitable sites, so if things don't go on well at 
 Maconi's we can change our position. 
 
 We slept in a little grass hut, taking precautions 
 against lions, which' have done a good deal to annoy 
 people about here. Next day we went on about 
 twenty miles to the Odzi river, which is the division 
 between Mashonaland and Manicaland. 
 
 July 2nd. — A mist covered the river, which 
 changed into sunshine on the high ground. Further 
 on two men from the coast told us that our three 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, JS'Jl. 
 
 nurses had arrived at 'Mpanda's iroin Durban, and 
 were doing excellent work, and that another doctor 
 had been sent up from one of 11. M. ships at Beira, 
 as Dr. Wilson was ill. The nurses were only 
 waiting for carriers to come on, but these seemed 
 hard to get, one of the two men telling me that 
 
 seven carriers from 'Mpanda's had cost him £21. 
 Gladly would people here give a shilling a yard for 
 barter calico worth twopence. Of the two last 
 waggons sent here with provisions from Fort Salis- 
 bury one upset in the river Rusarpe, and much was 
 spoilt. The waggons that ought to have brought my 
 provisions have not arrived, but I can get my 
 
38 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 ' rations ' from the Company liere, though one does 
 not like touching their stores. 
 
 Mr. Fiennes and I went and looked at a place 
 for a hospital ; then, going on further, we were 
 most successful in finding a site for our central 
 Mission station, that seemed to combine all require- 
 ments : very high, facing west, well exposed to the 
 wind, with water close, not stagnant water, but water 
 in the form of a fast running stream that can hardly 
 breed malaria, with a most lovely waterfall, beau- 
 tiful to look at and excellent to turn a water- 
 wheel, so that in the future our own sawing, grinding, 
 and pumping could be done by it. Behind all this 
 a large area will make admirable arable land, I think, 
 with excellent nooks for cattle, and an abundance of 
 timber for our house-building and firing. The place 
 is about two miles from the present camp. 
 
 July 4:th. — I set men to work at the Mission 
 station moving poles and reeds, cutting grass for 
 thatching, and found a place where bricks for the 
 walls could be made. 
 
 A trader came up from M'Panda's with thirty 
 bearers and things to sell. The men are delighted. 
 He brought me a letter from our nurse in charge, 
 Miss Blennerhasset, written bravely in the best of 
 spirits. She and the other two nurses are all very 
 hard at work : as they must be if a collection of 
 Europeans stays in one camp at such a spot on an 
 East African river. Wilkins, our carpenter, seems 
 valuable. Some one writes about him : ' He nurses 
 
THE BISHOrS JOURNAL, 18D1. 
 
 39 
 
 tlie sick, builds huts for people, everyone goes to 
 liim about everything — he is the most splendid 
 fellow.' I am very thankful to hear all this. 
 
 One of my Christian men is very ill with fever 
 and pneumonia, and we are nursing him up, and I 
 hope he is getting better. lie is a dear boy. It is 
 curious that a native from another country is almost 
 as liable to fever when it is prevalent as a European 
 would be. 
 
 July bt/i, Sunday. — We had a very quiet and 
 happy service with the police and others. Many men, 
 unfortunately, go out ' gold prospecting ' on Sunday 
 as their free day, and this and other causes lead to 
 a smaller attendance than one would wish. When 
 men have cut themselves off for some time from all 
 rehgious influence, it seems to be most difficult for 
 them in these wild countries to regain the habit of 
 keeping Sunday. 
 
 Jidy 1th. — I am building huts as quickly as 
 possible, so as to get shelter for the Mission workers 
 before the rainy season comes on. I wish one knew 
 more about this fever ; no one seems quite to know 
 how relative heights afiect it, or whether a site 
 4,700 feet high, with a swamp close under it on the 
 plateau, is more or less healthy than another only 
 3,800 feet high, but with the nearest swamp 1,000 
 feet below. 
 
 I went with Mr. Fiennes to see Umtasa, the native 
 chief of all this part of the country. He lives twelve 
 miles away, with a long climb on foot up to his town, 
 
4o THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, ISDl. 
 
 which is all among rocks, and defended by one 
 stockade after another. I sent him my present, and 
 after he had received it, and had time to put on his 
 reception clothes, I saw him. What I wanted was 
 to gain his approval of our being in his country ; 
 and after explanations he gave this fully and in the 
 presence of his headmen, which was important, as 
 this makes it a far more formal, or, as we should say, 
 authoritative sanction ; nothing could have been 
 more satisfactory. I then alluded to a teacher living 
 in or near his town ; this was a new idea to him, and 
 he naturally wished for time to think over it, but his 
 manner gave me no doubt that with a little time and 
 patience we shall gain our point. At any rate we 
 are settled in his country by his goodwill, and, please 
 God, the rest will come. 
 
 This is the third beginning of a Mission made, one 
 at each of the largest chiefs between here and Fort 
 Salisbury. So I rode home contented, and borrowed 
 two candles, a most valuable concession on the part 
 of the lender, to allow me to get on as quickly as I 
 could with work in connection with the survey of the 
 ground that I want for the Mission. 
 
 If I could only hear of my waggon coming up 
 through Bechuanaland and getting near Mount Wedza 
 I would go and meet it, and arrange for a fourth 
 centre near Wedza, as a large mass of Mashona live 
 there, and to the south, where I have been before. 
 
 I am staying meanwhile in a hut belonging to 
 Mr. Moody and Mr. Campion, not quite a mile from 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 41 
 
 tlie camp. Mr. Moody, by tlie way, was reported dead 
 of fever, but came in last night. Mr. Campion said 
 that one of his oxen had been killed by lions about 
 sixteen miles on the other side of the Odzi river, 
 and that they had then retired among the rocks. 
 
 There are ten Mashonanow under Tom, one of my 
 Capetown men, hard at work building the huts and 
 collecting thatch for our large Mission building. I 
 hope soon to have a hut up near the spot, so that I 
 can be there. 
 
 Sunday, July 12th. — I had service at the camp 
 in the morning, and with Mr. Campion, my host, 
 and the Christian natives in the evening. I told 
 the Mashona who are working for us that they 
 need not work to-day ; however, they went off and 
 worked for some one else, so they did not have their 
 day of rest. A belief in spirits seems to be the most 
 prominent feature of their religion. Near our huts 
 is a village where all the people are said to have 
 been killed in one of the Gaza raids, and the ordinary 
 native will not go into it. 
 
 July \A.th. — I was superintending the thatch and 
 brick-making when a native runner came up to say 
 the nurses and Dr. Glanville were near. They soon 
 appeared, terribly tired, with boots and clothes much 
 the worse for the journey, having walked the whole 
 140 miles — though it is usually reckoned much 
 more — with only four carriers for a great part 
 of the way, so that they have but little with them. 
 They are full of courage and good spirits, in spite of 
 
42 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 the liardsliips and diificulties they have been sur- 
 rounded by during the thirteen days of their journey 
 up from 'Mpanda's. It is a most remarkable per- 
 formance, and will probably meet with more recog- 
 nition in the future than it does now. In Africa there 
 seems to be too strong a tendency to self-advertisement 
 to allow any unadvertised work to be much recognised. 
 Mr. Campion and Mr. Moody at once had the nurses up 
 to their huts, and we all did what we could. I am 
 afraid our best was bad. Two of them had to sleep 
 on cut grass piled on the mud floor ; still it was 
 probably far better than anything they had slept on 
 for some time. 
 
 The officers and police sent them milk. I little 
 knew, when the engagement was made with the 
 Company to give them ' rations,' how great their 
 value would be. I took a very long walk to gain 
 information for the Mission, and the men are all 
 working well. The supply of food among the natives 
 seems to be very limited. There is considerable diffi- 
 culty in always having enough for our men. 
 
 July 11th. — Miss Blennerhasset has had an attack 
 of fever, and I have a slight one to-day ; but the 
 next day I rode over to the ' works,' where the bricks 
 are turning out admirably, though the moulds were 
 made out of packing-cases, and they seem so hard 
 from the effects of baking in the sun that they scarcely 
 need burning. 
 
 Nobody who has not been here can quite under- 
 stand how every plan is thrown out by our having 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, ISDl. 
 
 43 
 
 scarcely any tools to work with. Gladly would I 
 give £10 for two bricklayer's trowels. 
 
 Sunday, July 19th. — I went to tlie camp and visited 
 nearly all the men's huts before service ; it was a 
 particularly good one, and the one hymn Ave ventured 
 on was very well sung. I had service for the nurses 
 and my men up here at our huts in the afternoon. 
 The first element of Christianity that the Masliona 
 seem to appreciate is that they need not work on 
 Sunday. Tom, one of my Christian natives, is trying 
 to teach them something to-day. A poor Frenchman, 
 very ill, and carried in a hammock, was brought in 
 here, his carriers refusing to go on to his friend's hut, 
 but we arranged it for him. I grow more and more 
 thankful that I made my journey of exploration three 
 years ago, when one had the country almost to one- 
 self and with most of the things one wanted. 
 
 I was so sorry to hear that Harrison, who gave 
 me £Q towards the hospital, was ill on his way to 
 the Pungwe river. He had, too, most kindly lent 
 us his tent while the nurses had the hut. 
 
 July 22nd. — A man brought in a cow last night 
 from Umtasa's, but as he wanted four pieces of calico 
 for it, and I had not much more left in hand to pay 
 and feed my men with, I had to let the animal go. 
 
 To-day we began blasting stone for the foundations 
 of the house ; nothing else, probably, will resist the 
 heavy tropical rains. There are about twenty men 
 now making bricks. I have been most fortunate in 
 getting natives to work for me, though I can't pay 
 
44 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1S91. 
 
 til em much. They require constant supervision, not 
 because they wish to cheat one, but it is impossible 
 for them to understand the vahie of time. 
 
 July 24th. — The hospital huts are going up fairly 
 well. I had a long talk with Samuel (one of the native 
 Christians) to-day, and arranged to take him and 
 Tom to start a new Mission among the Mount Wedza 
 })eople. Mount Wedza lies about fifty miles from 
 this, and I was dehghted to find both men so eager 
 to begin there. I cannot be too thankful for the 
 excellence of my Christian natives. 
 
 July — All the work going on well. Mr. S. 
 arrived with carriers and some of the nurses' lugga'^e. 
 He is to come to live with me at the Mission Camp, 
 and work for us in exchange for his food. 
 
 I am told that candles are selling for 16.s\ a 
 packet in camp, and calico (presumably, the usual 
 2^d. a yard barter stuff) at 2*. a yard. This can 
 only be temporary, as calico is the staple payment 
 for all work done, except for the few men paid in 
 gold ; but as gold is practically impossible to be got 
 here, and as all our own tools are lying still in their 
 cases at 'Mpanda's, and we have to buy what we can 
 at high prices or borrow, some idea of the difficulties 
 to be worked under may be imagined. 
 
 The incessant difficulty of feeding the men, and 
 of getting them to have their food at the same time, 
 of keeping them from wasting half the day, with 
 their dread of cold weather, and their reverence, as a 
 rule, for nothing but force, make the founding of a 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 45 
 
 Mission in such a country as tliis a difficult under- 
 taking. 
 
 It is painful how the Mashona character plays 
 into the hands of all advocates of violence, for being 
 slaves at heart and cowards, they will so often do 
 through fear what they will do from no other motive. 
 One of the gentlest men in the country was lately 
 so derided by his carriers, who would do nothing, 
 that at last, when one huge native threatened him 
 and drove him to desperation, he knocked him down 
 and beat him with a thick stick. Immediately 
 every load was readily carried, and perfect peace and 
 order reigned. I am afraid the quickest way to gain 
 a point is so obviously by the policy of force that 
 at times one can hardly wonder at a certain class 
 of white men resorting to it ; of course in the end 
 it only demoralises the poor creatures more and 
 more, and puts off their moral, not to speak of 
 their spiritual education farther than ever. In 
 their present state the only power they seem really 
 to respect is brute force ; therefore, probably, the 
 rougher the white man they are dealing with is, the 
 greater ' lord ' they imagine him to be, though they 
 may prefer working for the gentler master. Forgive- 
 ness is nothing to them but a confession of weakness, 
 and they can't help feeling a certain respect for anyone 
 who knocks them down with a stick. As to grati- 
 tude, they have no word in their language for 
 ' thank you.' I always allow it is hard to exercise 
 the firmness, that will prevent their taking one's 
 
46 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 payment for little or no work done, without being 
 forced over the line into violence. A missionary 
 must have a strong belief in Christianity and in the 
 ultimate power of love to keep on his own lines. 
 
 If justly treated, in course of time the natives in 
 their curious way appreciate kindness. But while 
 they do not, it is impossible to deny that, to gain a 
 
 temporary end, with a slave race force may be 
 effective, but at our hands it lowers the people more 
 and more. One can see, however, how educating 
 to the character of the Israelites the training and 
 punishments of the wilderness must have been ; but 
 these were inflicted with infinite wisdom and love, 
 and it is certainly not for us, their poor fellow- 
 sinners, to take the law into our hands. But, 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 
 
 47 
 
 indeed, we may be well content with the projrress 
 wliicli the native character makes under Christianity 
 to-day. 
 
 The brutahty of some of the white men seems 
 to be very great. One man allowed, apparently 
 without shame, that he killed a native in the Trans- 
 vaal by hitting him with a brick, and I have heard 
 many other painful stories. All this is one of the 
 great difficulties we have when we try to give the 
 natives any respect for the white man's religion ; 
 and it will be hard work for any missionary to make 
 way against the dead weight of the ideas and actions 
 of the lower moral stratum of the European popula- 
 tion in Africa. 
 
 I had another service for the nurses and men in 
 the afternoon, and then walked out to the Mission 
 camp. Mr. Campion came with me, and was sur- 
 prised at our progress, saying he had never imagined 
 before that so much work would be done before the 
 rains. Early in the week Mr. S. and I moved up to 
 live on our Mission site. It is raining and very cold. 
 Cows are constantly going past to be sold in the 
 camp, but we can't afford them, as the natives want 
 either gold or calico, and what I have is going at a 
 terrible pace, and everything must come second to 
 feeding our workers and getting up buildings. 
 
 The traders who walk up seem to make drink 
 a large factor in their stores. When some of our 
 luggage came in, full of hope, I opened one bag that 
 ought to have contained food. A torn rag only 
 
48 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 appeared inside. ' What is it, Charlie ? ' Charlie, 
 laconically, ' Eats.' 
 
 But in spite of all it is a very interesting scene, 
 with a future in the background that may be, by 
 God's guidance, infinitely fruitful. Just now all the 
 different little gangs are at work, one thatching a 
 large hut close to mine ; another, about 200 yards 
 
 away, blasting and moving rock, taking out really 
 splendid pieces of granite ; and though the trouble is 
 very great, this stone foundation may stand when 
 anything else would be washed away. On the rise 
 beyond, the native thatch-carriers are continually 
 moving up and down, tying up and carrying away 
 the grass, as the cutters supply them ; under the hill 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 49 
 
 the brick-making is going on. Certainly, some of 
 these coast natives have either seen brick -making 
 before or have fallen into it very quickly. The 
 Mashona have learnt after some trouble to tread 
 the clay and lay out the bricks. But the most 
 characteristic scene is when the work is over, and 
 they all gather round their half-dozen fires in the 
 evening ; to-night they are in specially good temper, 
 as no food could be bought for them, and I had to 
 give them some of my meal. They are giving a good 
 English day labourer's work, beginning at about 
 6.30 A.M., with an hour for food at eleven, and work- 
 ing on till sunset. 
 
 August 1st. — A cold drizzly day, and the men don't 
 like working, but they keep on very well. They 
 make little songs and sing them as they work ; this 
 was the chorus of one : ' Ikona chikogo, maninge 
 makaza ' (We have no coat, and it is very cold). 
 
 August 2nd. — Holy Communion in my hut with S. 
 and the three natives. Another drizzling cold day. 
 I walked to the camp for the eleven o'clock service, 
 and administered the Holy Communion there a second 
 time. I found a good many relapsed cases of fevei . 
 
 August 4th. — I got a great concession from Um- 
 tasa's men this morning. After saying they liked me 
 and would do the work I wished, they began to call 
 me ' Umfundisi ' (teacher) instead of ' lord,' which is 
 a great improvement. 
 
 I am very anxious to get off to the western and 
 southern chiefs, but must wait till provisions of some 
 
5° 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 kind come up, and especially some barter goods to 
 buy food with. 
 
 August Qth. — There was great excitement round 
 the camp fires to-night over the new moon ; the 
 men have been watching for it eagerly, and it was 
 curious to see one elderly gentleman of the tribe 
 leaving the groups round the fire to jump up on to a 
 rock and address the moon. After an apparently 
 eloquent speech he threw a stone vigorously towards 
 the slender crescent in the deep blue above our 
 heads, and then solemnly jumped down again. I 
 had hoped the day was over, but the new moon 
 ushered in a whole train of trouble that one trusts 
 may pass away soon. 
 
 A note came in by some post-runners to say our 
 catechist Frank is very ill at Maconi's, and that the 
 medicine there is exhausted. He seems to have been 
 doing admirably, building two huts, and getting on 
 well with the natives. Two boys have been sent to 
 him by their father to be taught, and both old and 
 young are very anxious to hear what he has to say. 
 As this report is from a trooper quartered there it is 
 certainly reliable. The good account of his success 
 is a great relief, and more than could ever have 
 been expected after my rather stormy interview with 
 Maconi. Under God's blessing the success that 
 seems to be attending all the missionary work is an 
 intense pleasure, and cannot be cancelled even by the 
 continual anxiety and worry caused by the news of 
 some false step. 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 August 7 th. — I sent Tom and a very good coast 
 boy, who speaks Seshuna perfectly, to the great chief 
 here, Umtasa, with a message about my building a 
 church there. At present we have more native food 
 brought to us for sale tlian we can stow away, but 
 the men bringing it must not be discouraged, though 
 we have almost come to our last yard of calico. At 
 the camp they often send to the villages to buy. I 
 am reduced by dirt to offer 5s. a bar for common 
 soap, but I cannot get it. Wilkins, who has been 
 bringing up the Mission stores from 'Mpanda's, came 
 in to-night. The men who engaged to bring them 
 started with seventy oxen, and little more than half- 
 way here the last of them were dying or dead from 
 tsetse fly. 
 
 To-day Captain Heany wrote, saying that a 
 Diggers' Fund for the hospital here was being raised 
 among the men, and that he expected a fair sum from 
 It. This is a great comfort, as it may enable the 
 nurses to have some decent arrangements made, and 
 to have appliances of a rough kind brought for the 
 hospital from the coast. A few days afterwards I 
 was very ill from something ; I am told that it was 
 another attack of fever, and that I ought to leave 
 the country, but I think that a much too serious view 
 Is taken of it. 
 
52 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE bishop's journey TO THE SOUTHERN TRIBES. 
 
 The work was now going on fairly well, and as 
 a reliable man could be left in charge, the Bishop 
 decided to start at once to visit the chiefs to the 
 west and south ; so the little party, consisting of the 
 Bishop, two natives, and carriers, left Umtali and 
 reached Chikangas village. 
 
 August 21st. — As I was starting early to go and see 
 the chieftainess, living as usual on a hill, I met her 
 coming to meet me. She is a daughter of our great 
 chief, Umtasa, and is very quiet and gentle. I spoke 
 to her about our teaching, and my wish to put up a 
 teacher's hut in her village ; but to this she replied 
 that the white men beat her people. I then 
 explained that there were two kinds of white men. 
 She said she understood that. If she does, it is a rare 
 thing, as the ordinary native certainly does not ; but 
 then neither do we, as a rule, recognise the same 
 fact with regard to them. We speak of native 
 character as though individuality and class did not 
 exist among them as among Europeans. I asked if 
 she would not like to hear some of our Christian 
 teaching ; she looked at me for a minute, and 
 then said gently, ' If you do not start soon, you 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 53 
 
 will not reach the next village before dark.' We 
 had some more conversation, and she gave me 
 a guide to take me on to the next chief, Inya- 
 foumbi. He was about fourteen miles away, and 
 by the noise as we came near the village we 
 gathered that a ' beer-drinking ' was going on. The 
 drink is made frOm Kafir corn, and can be made very 
 strong, though cool and not unpleasant in taste. 
 The concoction may be different, but tlie results are 
 much the same as they would be at home. A 
 ' beer-drinking ' is a serious ceremony ; it is an- 
 nounced for a certain day, when all the natives near 
 crowd into the village, and the great pots of beer 
 are brought out by the women. The wretched scene 
 goes on all day and night ; the men, and in some 
 places the women, drink to stupefaction, then sleep, 
 then wake to drink again, till sometimes horrible 
 results ensue. When one is told of the superiority 
 of the heathen to the Christian native, and of the 
 advantages of leaving missionary work alone, such 
 scenes as this come into one's mind, and one thinks 
 of the numberless faithful converts who concerning 
 these things ' have put off the old man.' 
 
 August 22nd. — It rained in the night, and was a 
 miserable morning. I saw the chief last night, 
 but he came again this morning to say he would 
 willingly have a teacher in his village himself, but 
 he must know first what the head chief, Chikodora, 
 thought of it. We parted on very good terms, 
 packed up our few possessions, and walked on about 
 
54 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 five miles to the Odzi river. It is a large, rapid river, 
 about seventy yards wide at the ford where we 
 crossed it, but fairly shallow, and we walked through 
 more easily than we expected. 
 
 About mid-day we reached Mazikana's village, 
 five miles farther on, and found him an old and very 
 polite man, immediately giving us a fowl and meal. 
 I gave him a present, a rug, and we began the usual 
 conversation that always ends in the same way, 
 namely, that if the head chief wishes it he will 
 receive a teacher. I went on with very pleasant 
 impressions of the old gentleman, and we began a 
 really beautiful walk through rocks, valleys, and 
 gorges until about sunset we reached Chinoouta's 
 village. He, too, was most polite, and we talked 
 about our Mission. Afterwards he sent down the 
 largest pot of native beer that I have seen, and I 
 allowed my men to have it, as they are having very 
 hard work now and very little to eat, and to-day 
 have walked nearly eighteen miles. 
 
 August 2 ore?, Sunday. — We started by the first 
 light of a damp cold morning, as I feel anxious to reach 
 the head chief, Maranki, as quickly as possible. All 
 the promises of his under-chiefs to accept teachers are 
 conditional on his consent. On our way we stopped 
 at Muteti's village, another sub- chief, and there was 
 some delay while he was being fetched to see me, 
 but we had then a very satisfactory interview. He 
 brought a present of meal and I gave him one of 
 cahco. After the Mission had been thoroughly 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 
 
 55 
 
 explained to him he seemed glad to go back to his 
 fires, Avhilc we started again. 
 
 Presently we had one of the many diversions 
 provided by this mode of travel. One of the 
 donkeys ran away with his load into the rather 
 thick bush which our path was going through. 
 This is very amusing to watch wlien food is plenti- 
 ful, but when almost one's whole supply for a 
 fortnight is disappearing the joke seems a sad one. 
 However, after a long delay and much running 
 about of the men, we got him back, and went on to 
 Mapa's village — the last one before we reach the 
 head chief, Maranki. I had my own talk and expla- 
 nation with Mapa as to the Mission there, but then 
 began the usual delay and waste of time, they 
 wishing me at first to remain there while Maranki 
 was told of my arrival, and then to go round a great 
 hill to a certain Induna who would announce me. 
 [Each of the great chiefs is supposed to have an 
 Induna, or headman, whose special business it is to 
 announce strangers.] I insisted on going straight, 
 when they said there was no road and no water ; 
 however, we found both, and encamped in peace 
 about mid-day under his town. We had walked 
 between thirteen and fourteen miles, and were glad 
 of a quiet afternoon. Maranki upset my plan for a 
 long talk to-day with him and his people by sending 
 to say he would come to see me early to-morrow. 
 A little time to oneself is very welcome, as one gets 
 none on a journey of this kind when one is head of 
 
56 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 the party. Getting the men up, seeing the donkeys 
 are fed and their packs properly put on, getting away 
 from the village, arranging for food, fitting in the 
 travelhng habits of the Mashona with those of the 
 donkeys, finding guides, seeing chiefs, answering the 
 foolish objections they make to showing one the 
 road, tr3'ing to get a direct answer to any question, 
 and generally overcoming hour after hour the native 
 faculty for wasting time in its exquisite perfection : 
 these, besides the day's walk, tend to exhaustion 
 towards the evening. 
 
 One great comfort is that my men do not leave 
 me, and we get on ; so I cannot be too thankful, and 
 thank Him continually who prospers our going, and 
 any little drawbacks and annoyances ought not to be 
 remembered. 
 
 August 24:th. — After sunrise Maranki came down 
 to oui' little camp with a large following, all delight- 
 fully wild, with bows and arrows and a few old 
 guns. Having come a long way to see him, and 
 wishing keenly to have all his country open to our 
 Mission, I was rather nervous as to our interview. 
 I went a short way to meet him, and brought him 
 back to my camp ; he and his headmen sat round 
 in a semicircle, and we had a very long conversation. 
 Maranki is a very nice-looking man, diffident and 
 gentle. It was touching to see how he felt the 
 necessity of having to yield to the authority of the 
 white man in the future ; but he did it so graciously 
 that one felt every benefit that could be brought 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 57 
 
 by Christianity to him and his people was only 
 their due. His only objection to a teacher was the 
 usual one : ' that his people were too old to learn ' ; 
 but afterwards he seemed to wish to have one. To 
 give him plenty of time to talk it over with his men, 
 I offered to walk back with him up to his town, 
 which is on a high steep hill. It was a hot day and 
 a long climb, but we were able to talk as we 
 went along. Quite soon, without his being pressed 
 (which I do not find a good plan), he said that 
 when a teacher came he would look after him. 
 It seems a simple sentence, but it meant that our 
 teachers would be accepted by him and by all the 
 inferior chiefs in his country. He is quite one of 
 the nicest men I have had to deal with ; his people 
 are Mabotcha, and from a missionary point of view 
 seem most hopeful. They make really beautiful 
 blankets out of bark, and the chief had quite the 
 best-made native knife that I have seen. The town 
 itself has all the picturesqueness and dirt of the hill 
 villages, perched high up among rocks. The women 
 saluted me in the same way as some others seventy 
 miles away to the north-west did three years ago : 
 one prolonged loud note is uttered, while the hands 
 are moved quickly in front of the mouth to cause 
 vibration. 
 
 We left with a guide to the next village, on our 
 way to a chief whom I had not heard of before 
 On the road we saw a headman, who listened to two 
 sentences of what I told him and then walked away? 
 
58 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 as if any conversation about a God was too foolish to 
 listen to. Altogether, we walked about ten miles, 
 and reached a village belonging to a chieftainess, 
 M'pomwa, where we stayed for the night, but as she 
 was sick and away I could only leave a message for 
 her. 
 
 August 2,5th. — As we went on walking to-day it 
 did not require an aneroid to tell us we were getting 
 on low ground. The night had been very hot, and 
 the condition of the country became the same as in 
 the Zambesi valley : here is the agate ground, the 
 mopani and the baobab trees taking the place of the 
 others on the high ground, the same birds, the 
 scorching sun and thirst, with water only at intervals. 
 Before breakfast we went about fourteen miles along 
 the watershed of the Sabi and Odzi rivers ; saw one 
 chief on the way, and stopped at Darokasoa's village, 
 who is chieftainess, and daughter of Tsago, to whom 
 we are going. Her husband came to see us, brought 
 a present, and said that he would receive a teacher 
 and feed him well. This is all very satisfactory; but 
 we are getting very low, and shall soon be out of 
 the possibihty of a European hving, and the air is 
 close and muggy even here. The insects are most 
 curious : one is quite indistinguishable to the naked 
 eye from a piece of stick until it moves, and the four 
 little legs are stuck into the thin round body exactly 
 as in a child's wooden horse. 
 
 We went on about five miles to Tsago's village. 
 The chief came to look at us and then went away, 
 
(I 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1S91. 
 
 59 
 
 but presently sent down some native beer, we shout- 
 ing up at the huts on the hill that we wanted to buy 
 food . 
 
 August 2Qth. — The chief came very early, behav- 
 ing very quietly and intelligently, and we exchanged 
 presents. His people laughed when I spoke to them 
 about God and a future life, which they seem to 
 think very amusing, though on the whole the inter- 
 view was satisfactory, as the chief said he was glad 
 to see me and would be glad to have teachers. 
 
 He gave a guide, and we loaded up and started, 
 plunging into a sea of mountains. When next we 
 changed guides the chief himself came as one, 
 which was an advantage in many ways. Having 
 been accepted by Maranki, the paramount chief, I 
 am now passed on with every courtesy. [The tribal 
 organisation is very pecuUar and strong, the chief 
 having an undefinable power, which does not seem 
 to be great on the surface, but yet must be recognised 
 by those working in the country if they wish to be 
 received by the whole tribe.] 
 
 The path from the hills led us lower and lower, 
 till we got into a thick haze that hid everything at a 
 distance. There were numbers of trees unknown to 
 the Mashona uplands, and among them the yellow 
 fever tree, believed only to grow in malarial districts. 
 We went through a mass of hills, as much on the flat 
 as possible, and almost due south on our way to 
 Gundyanga's country. The gardens cultivated here 
 by the people are immense ; they work the ground 
 
6o THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 in a most systematic way, and from their knowledge 
 of the chmate and soil to be dealt with probably 
 produce more than Europeans would do without 
 long practice. 
 
 By continually thanking them for every civility 
 the natives begin to use to me in return the only 
 expression of thanks they have, ' I praise you,' but 
 their way of thanking by action is to scrape the 
 ground with their feet alternately and very quickly. 
 Clapping the hands is the action further north. It is 
 extraordinary how far nicer they are when they have 
 not had to do with a low kind of Europeans. If only 
 these countries could be colonised by a high-minded 
 set of Englishmen, what an unspeakable difference it 
 would make in the education and in the whole future 
 existence of the natives ! 
 
 We stopped to-day at Mazombe's, and slept 
 near water. There were clumps of fan palms all 
 round. 
 
 August 27th. — It was raining when we started, 
 almost before • sunrise, and walked on to Chiadzua's 
 village, where we found a clump of natives sitting 
 round a fire. At first no one would show me which 
 was the chief, but after a time the man himself got 
 up, saying he did not think he ought to hide from 
 the white man, and saluted me. He was delightful, 
 very good-looking, and intelligent. He brought us 
 a big pot of ' leting ' for the men, which is really 
 admirable food for them now when they are walking 
 hard and do not have breakfast till after the first 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 6i 
 
 walk of ten miles or so. [Leting is a form of 
 mild native beer, made from Kafir corn, and very 
 nourishing.] 
 
 The chief seemed very pleased to hear of the 
 teachers coming, and both the country and the 
 people were far more interesting than in the north. 
 They make the best baskets here that I have 
 seen : the workmanship is really beautiful. They 
 also use poisoned arrows and fire-sticks. [Fire- 
 sticks are two dry pieces of wood from one par- 
 ticular tree ; they are rubbed together till sparks 
 are obtained.] The women all came down to see 
 us pass. 
 
 The region of tall palm trees has begun, and the 
 baobab trees are immense ; one I tried to measure, 
 pacing it round as close to the trunk as possible, 
 and making it 70 feet. [The baobab tree bears a 
 melon- shaped fruit containing cream of tartar ; its 
 trunk is immense in girth, but very short. Near 
 villages pegs are found stuck into the wood by 
 which the natives climb up to reach the fruit, which 
 they believe in very much, both as medicine and 
 food.] 
 
 Chiadzua gave us two guides — they prefer going in 
 pairs on account of the lions — and we walked on to 
 the Sabi river. It was a broad sandy stream where 
 we reached it, and some natives were distilling salt. 
 They have a kind of funnel-shaped basket, which 
 they fill with the earth they find impregnated with 
 salt, and they then apparently pour water on till the 
 
62 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 soil is washed through the basket-work and the salt 
 crystals remain. 
 
 While we liad our food one of the guides told us 
 how the Batonga people skin their dogs, and fill the 
 skin with moistened meal, which is tightly tied up 
 and left to ferment until the whole skin is strained, 
 when they look on it as a dainty dish ready to be 
 cut in slices and eaten. 
 
 About mid-day we crossed the Odzi river close to 
 where it joins the Sabi, and with the help of some 
 squatting natives we found Gundyanga's village. 
 The entrance is hidden and protected by a kind of 
 labyrinth of bush and trees, through which the 
 narrow path winds in and out. Not a person was to 
 be seen when we went in ; they had all run away. 
 Presently the chief appeared, and said he was very 
 poor, and that Gungunyan had raided on him and 
 killed his people. He was very polite, and stayed at 
 our camp for two or three hours, and I had a long 
 talk with him about our Mission. He gave me a goat, 
 and I gave him a blanket. He is the paramount 
 chief of the Gumbu people, and very intelligent 
 people they seem to be. All this part of the 
 country, too, is very beautiful, nearly flat, and one 
 immense jungle. I was choosing the graveyard of 
 the village]/or our sleeping-place, when they told 
 me what it was. This is the only instance of a native 
 graveyard|that I have seen in Africa. At one place 
 they bury their chief by putting him in a hut, which 
 they fill up with pieces of meat ; the whole hut 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 63 
 
 is left alone for some months, when all that is left 
 inside is taken to a cave, and the idea is maintained 
 that the chief never dies. 
 
 Though we have had our longest walk of all to- 
 day, and two interviews with chiefs, yet we are not 
 nearly as tired as usual, because there has been no 
 sun. 
 
 August 2Sth. — The chief came again early to say 
 he would certainly receive our teachers, take great 
 care of them, and always have a hut ready for them 
 till their own should be built. He said if the teachers 
 came to his country then Gungunyan could not raid 
 upon him any more. 
 
 This is another whole district open to us now, and 
 when I asked for a guide to take us farther south, he 
 and his chief counsellor came with us instead. They 
 were very intelligent, and to save ravines for the 
 donkeys they took us a roundabout way towards 
 'Mtema's, the next chief. We passed acre after acre 
 of well-cultivated fields, chiefly along the banks of 
 the Sabi and cut out of the thick jungle. The trees 
 would delight a botanist, and the birds delight me. 
 Sometimes the path went for a mile or two through 
 masses of beautiful shrubs, then came a clearing with 
 huts, and a family in charge. The walking was very 
 easy. When we stopped for our food the chief sat 
 opposite to me, and, after washing his hands, had his 
 own food brought to him — it was fish caught in the 
 Sabi river, and meal. Altogether he behaved as a 
 native gentleman would. We made a very short walk 
 
64 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 afterwards to Zitiro's village. When we were camped 
 the musicians came down to sing a song about the 
 last white man — apparently the only one — who came 
 through about thirty years ago, as far as I can make 
 out. The headman, a son of Gundyanga, accepted 
 our teachers, and said he would give them a place to 
 live in. 
 
 Then I hoped for an hour's quiet, as we had 
 stopped early, but the musician came quite close, 
 and appeared as determined as any London organ- 
 grinder to have a present, saying he would play all 
 day and all night, and come with us to the next 
 village. This terrible threat produced his present, 
 and he went. [They play monotonous tunes with 
 their fingers on instruments w^ith two rows of iron 
 notes. For their great evening entertainments 
 in the villages the shouting and singing is accom- 
 panied by drums, which they beat for hours together, 
 while the people dance round and round. As the 
 villages are usually on the top of a hill, the effect at 
 night from below is very weird.] 
 
 August 29th. — Started early, before sunrise, and 
 after thirteen or fourteen miles came to good water 
 at the village of 'Mtema's son, where we breakfasted. 
 The Induna from Gundyanga went back from here, 
 with a final assertion that they were going to build 
 a hut for our teacher, and that his people would like 
 to be under the protection of the great English Queen. 
 
 August 30^/i, Sunday. — I had service with the 
 catechists, and explained strongly to them from the 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, ISHJ. 
 
 65 
 
 second lesson liow careful they must be when living 
 among the lieatlion, and wliat a great work was 
 before them if they used the opportunity well. 
 
 While we were having service the chief 'Mtema 
 came, bringing a goat as a present. After a long 
 talk I asked him to go and discuss all I had told him 
 Avitli his village. When he came back he said that 
 he and his peoj^le wished to have a teacher, and that 
 they would lend him a hut until his own should be 
 built, on a piece of ground to be pointed out to 
 me. I thanked him, and told him to thank God for 
 having teachers sent to him. Perhaps an idea that 
 Gungunyan will be kept away holds a more prominent 
 place in their acceptance of our Mission than any 
 desire to learn Christianity. 
 
 In the afternoon three women came down very 
 anxious to see me, as no white man had been to the 
 village before. When we met they made the kind of 
 exclamation that would be made at the Zoological 
 Gardens over quite a new animal. They saluted very 
 nicely, and said that when the teacher came they 
 would cook well for him and take care of him. 
 
 August Mst. — It was very dark when we started. 
 A donkey got away and delayed us by rolling on his 
 load on the village cinder-heap. We went N.E. by 
 E. steadily for about twelve miles, and then reached 
 water, breakfast, and a chief at Nedanhe's village. 
 He met us, saluting in the pretty way that is some- 
 times found among these wilder tribes — coming 
 forward with both luuids spread out as though 
 
 p 
 
66 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 ofTering himself to one. lie accepted our teacliors, 
 and we went on, passing one beautiful stream of clear 
 running water after another, and fnially following one, 
 llie Moloti, up a lovely valley till we stopped for tlie 
 night, after a walk to-day of about twenty-five miles. 
 The men were very happy as tliey liad plenty of food. 
 
 One advantage of our constant cliange of guides 
 is that as they feed round the same fire, and join at 
 niglit in our prayers, they must learn sometliing to 
 tell their villages. 
 
 SejJteinber \st. — We walked on by the side of the 
 Moloti up to its source ; we then crossed its watershed 
 to the Imarque river, which runs into the Sabi, but 
 exactly where we are I don't know. 
 
 I fired off my rifle to-day for tlie first time, and 
 shot a very large sable antelope, male ; it only 
 delayed us half an hour, and the meat cheered up 
 the men immensely. They have walked excellently, 
 and certainly deserve all they can have. 
 
 We reached a village where our guide left us to 
 go back, and the people wanted us to wait till some 
 one came to take us on to the great chief about here, 
 Mooucha. I could not wait : and presently we found 
 some wandering ■ men wlio ofiered to guide us, so we 
 travelled slowly up and down hills, among rocks and 
 stones, till we came to Giaza's village. We have 
 risen about 1,050 feet during the last two days, 
 finding great relief in being away from the low 
 ground : here we are about 3,750 feet above sea-level, 
 and surrounded by mountains far higher. This may 
 
THE niSHOJ"S JOURNAL, ISUI. 
 
 67 
 
 be a splendid site some day lor a braneli Mission 
 centre. 
 
 September 2nd. — Tlie cliiei" s son came down for 
 our interview, saying that his father was too old to 
 travel. He and his men were very sensible, saying 
 they thought they would find it difficult to learn, but 
 would try. The objections vary a little in each 
 place ; however, we settled everj^thing here more 
 quickly than ever before. They are the Nyamaza 
 people. I invited them to come to our fire, and 
 gave them meat and meal ; they help me a good deal 
 with my map. 
 
 They certainly build far more sensibly than the 
 Mashona ; the huts are put on rising ground, but 
 near water, and near their gardens ; and as they do 
 not crowd the huts in among the rocks, the village is 
 far cleaner. They dread the raids of Gungunyan, as 
 the Mashona dread those of Lobengula ; but till 
 the raid comes they lead a pleasanter life. I was 
 struck by the way in which the women of these 
 tribes mix in the public life, and they behave very 
 nicelj'' and intelligently. Unless they feel an ' intro- 
 duction ' has taken place between them and us by 
 my being accepted at a village, they turn out of the 
 road when we meet them, and do not look at us. 
 The little black children usually run at the sight of 
 me, and sometimes their screams show hoAv re- 
 pugnant is the white skin to their purely natural 
 mind. They seem sharper than their white contem- 
 poraries, as one of the latter terrified w^ould probably 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, IHUl. 
 
 stand and scream ; here the little mite scuttles ofT to 
 hide, or, if its motlier is in sight, runs to her and 
 jumps up on her back. They do not seem to run to 
 hei' arms at all. 
 
 To-day Ave liave been among mountains, with a 
 bad guide. One chief we saw immediately gave me 
 Ins garden hoe, as it was the only present he could 
 make me. I formally gave it back as a present 
 from myself, saying I could not take away what was 
 so necessary to him He equally formally accepted 
 it, scraping his feet on the ground and thanking. 
 ' But,' he said, ' what will my father Parpedo say to 
 my having given you no present ? ' He sent another 
 guide on with us, and till sundown we clambered 
 and stumbled over rocks and stones till we crossed 
 a very high pass among the mountains, and came to 
 the head of a beautiful valley, with the little river 
 Munianiazi running down it. Here we camped for 
 the night, and as our matches did not arrive with 
 us the men made fire with tlie fire-sticks. 
 
 September ord. — Our path lay down the valley, 
 the most iertile I have seen in Africa ; the hills, 
 even in the dry season, drain down into the central 
 l)rook, and under the mountains is a broad belt of 
 land that seems capable of growing anything. It 
 is very thinly inhabited, as its chief, Parpedo, lives 
 away up on a great height with a wide look-out, 
 so as to have the earliest warning of a raid from 
 Gungunyan 
 
 We passed two villages, where I liad talks with 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, isnl. 
 
 69 
 
 the people, and climbed soiiKi steej) I'ocky hills 011 
 our way to Parpedo, but I found the road was taking 
 us so far into the mountains and away iVom Umtali 
 that I had our camp made, and sent the guide to ask 
 Parpedo to come to me. To save a day, I followed 
 the guide, and found tlie chief, with whom I had the 
 usual talk, and lieard the usual objections, only very 
 pleasantly put. 
 
 He was coughing l)adly, but when I oflered him 
 medicine he refused, saying he was not really ill : 
 ' If I were really ill I should be afraid that I was 
 going to die.' I spoke to him about death, and that 
 when we died the Great God in heaven took us. 
 He asked, ' How could that be, because if he were 
 taken to heaven he could never come back to earth ? ' 
 Their reasoning is very childish and material, and 
 then again pathetic, as when they say they are black 
 men, and so how can they learn ? 
 
 I always try to make them feel it is they who 
 should be grateful for the teacher, and not we for 
 their accepting him. Poor Parpedo wished to talk 
 more of Gungunyan's raids than of any tiling else : 
 and then there was plainly some one else, too, he 
 was afraid of; and so he passes what might be a 
 happy life in almost the only ugly spot in his really 
 beautiful country, without fuel and in keen mountain 
 air. We parted on excellent terms, ard I walked 
 back to our camp with a goat and a guiae, and the 
 chief's invitation to our Mission to come to his 
 country — all very valuable pieces of property, but 
 
70 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 like others partly fleeting, as the guide found our 
 hillside too bleak and windy, and went back to his 
 village, saying he woidd catch cold. 
 
 These people are called the Gargwe people : they 
 make excellent matting out of split reeds. 
 
 September 4th. — We had to go twelve miles down 
 a valley to get round an immense mountain. For 
 four days we have been in a sea of mountains ; there 
 seems no break in any direction, and I can see con- 
 tinuous mountains to the south-west for some twenty 
 miles at least. 
 
 We have been in some very beautiful valleys, and 
 in several of the streams, especially in the higher 
 part of the country, we found the blue water-lily. 
 
 Breakfast to-day was near an exquisitely lovely 
 brook, clear water rippling over stones, and trees 
 everywhere. After thirteen miles of sun this was a 
 delightful place for our two hours' rest. We then 
 walked on to Inyamana's town, and climbed up his 
 big mountain to get some rather dirty water and to 
 find that he was away. Later in the evening his son 
 came to see us, and we slept in a kind of ploughed 
 field. 
 
 September btli. — I decided to go back to Umtali 
 direct, as the next great chiefs can be easily reached 
 from there ; we cannot be very far away now. We 
 walked thirteen miles under a hot sun, and breakfasted 
 near an exquisitely beautiful mountain stream, the 
 Mopudzi. I had plenty of time to wash, as Charlie, the 
 Capetown native who cooks for me, is consistently one 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, ISOI. 
 
 71 
 
 of the hiiidor cletaclimeiit in our walks. He excused 
 liimself to-day by saying he had never seen a ' white 
 man ' walk as I did ; perhaps if he knew how very 
 nearly the ' white man ' has had enough of it lie 
 might not respect him so much. 
 
 Three men have joined us, saying they want to 
 work. We have one yard of calico left, so perha})s 
 it is time we got back to our base. [There is no 
 money in use among the natives ; guides have to be 
 paid and food bought with calico. The measurement 
 is from one hand to another when both arms are 
 stretched out to their farthest extent, and one of 
 these would be good payment for a guide for the day. 
 The caHco is cheap unbleached cotton, worth about 
 2^d. a yard at Capetown, but a great deal more 
 after it as been carried into this country. Farthcj' 
 north the people prefer blue calico, as it is supposed 
 to keep away devils.] 
 
 We have left the country of ' happy valleys ' 
 round Parpedo's ; all through them the foliage of the 
 ' machabel ' trees was beautiful beyond words, the 
 young leaves being of every shade of colour from 
 golden yellow to deep crimson. We finished the 
 day by a good second walk, about twenty-three miles 
 altogether. 
 
 Sunday, September Qth. — We reached Moladjiqua's 
 village after six miles ; he is a brother of the head 
 chief, and was stupid and utterly unlike the south- 
 country chiefs we have been among. I could make 
 no impression on him from a missionary point of 
 
72 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 view. The people here are called Gindui. The women 
 wear a porcelain tube about one and a half inches 
 lono-, pushed through their upper lip ; half stands out 
 in front, the rest is accommodated in the mouth as 
 best it may be, and the effect is odd. 
 
 The walk back to Umtali was the worst one I 
 have had to do, and I thought once I should hardly 
 get m. Perhaps the sun has a good deal to do with 
 one's exhaustion, but then it is a continual factor in 
 the work in this country, as I suppose it must be in 
 all tropical lands. How well one learns to understand 
 here the Bible view of the sun, and tlie beauty of the 
 promise : ' The sun shall not burn thee by day ' ; 
 and the coolness and rest of ' the shadow of a great 
 rock in a weary land ' ; or again, the force of ' As 
 soon as the sun was up it was scorched '! 
 
 We got into Umtali after doing twenty-four miles 
 u]) and down hill ; at the last river the donkey 
 carrying the sleeping-blankets fell down and lay in 
 the water, and was only saved from drowning with 
 great difficulty. 
 
 We seem altogether to have walked about 280 
 miles, and I feel it has been a most useful journey 
 for our future work. Thanks be to God ! 
 
 September 7th. — We hear that Dr. Glanville died 
 on his road from here to Fort Salisbury — what from I 
 cannot find out ; he had two horses and apparently 
 every convenience for the road when he left us. I 
 am very sorry. 
 
 Wilkins had a long series of troubles to tell me ; 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 73 
 
 s()incM)f tlic Mashona had lei't liiiii soon al'ter I started, 
 aiu no iiitelli^uent workman could be found under 
 exorbitant wages ; the brighter news is that somehow 
 or inothci- 50,000 bi-icks have been made. The 
 nurses have nu)ved into their new liospital liuts, and 
 are far more comfortable ; their one luxury is a 
 
 msUOp'b HUT AT DMTALI. [From a Photogiapli. 
 
 small cliina tea-set that has actually been brought up 
 from 'Mpanda's, and to be asked to share their after- 
 noon tea reminds the camp and myself of the far- 
 away English home. A man has brought up his 
 wife and two children, who are ill with fever. I wish 
 we could do more for them. 
 
74 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BlSllOl'S JOURxXEV TO THE WESTERN TRIBES. 
 
 September lUr//. — My plan is to start to-day lor 
 Fort Salisbury to sec the Administrator, Dr. Jameson, 
 about land for the Church settlements. William Wilson 
 goes with me to plant out two catecliists with chiefs 
 to the north. I shall be able to take a horse for this 
 journey. After starting, the Mashona wlio had been 
 put in charge of the food thought it heavy to carry, 
 so he and two friends ate it all. Not knowing this, 
 I stayed behind to see the nurses and Mr. Fiennes. 
 The value of such a Christian gentleman as he is, 
 under the circumstances in which we are all livino- 
 seems to increase daily. The officer in command, 
 Captain Bruce, is also most kind to us ; and to know 
 that all the higher-class men of the country are with 
 one in the work certainly removes half the weight of 
 difficulties and annoyances. 
 
 I cauglit up my men at sunset, to find them very 
 discontented at having no food. I had to send five 
 miles to the nearest village to buy some, but none 
 arrived. 
 
 September Wtli. — The men were mostly sulky at 
 not having their pro})er food, though I gave them some 
 of the little I had. We managed to get them to walk 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 
 
 75 
 
 on al)oul twciity-tAvo miles, rorluips I ought to be 
 thankful niy men only grumble when they are 
 hungry, mstead of deserting, as one constantly hears 
 of their doing. On our way we met three Europeans 
 from Fort Salisbury, and had a talk. One of them 
 ])leased me very much by saying he thought mission- 
 ary work among the Mashona would be most 
 useful ; his reasons were their extraordinary im- 
 morality, and their thieving habits. The latter charge 
 I do not think a true one. 
 
 September Vlth. — We walked on the few miles 
 to Maconi's town, as my first visit had been too 
 unsatisfactory to be contented with, surrounded 
 as he had been by his men, all noisy and wild. I 
 had left our catechist Frank four miles oil", but I 
 was anxious to get things on a better footing than 
 this. 
 
 "We began with a moral tussle. I sent the ordinary 
 message of salutation up to him, to which he replied 
 courteously that I must go up and see him, the real 
 meaning being that he would not come out to see me. 
 As I had been once to see him, I felt it would be 
 taking a wrong position to go again ; and it is very 
 curious what a bad effect upon the native mind and 
 upon their attitude towards their teachers this has. 
 So I sent him word that I was going on soon, but 
 that I wished to see him there, and had my present 
 for him. Soon he appeared with his men, quite 
 sober and ready to talk quietly. For a long time we 
 went round the question of his receiving our 
 
76 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 missionaries in true native fashion, till at last he 
 said that he would show me the place where the 
 teachers could live. I liad hoped at the most that 
 he would give a kind of permission for his people to 
 be taught, but this definite position is most valuable. 
 His country is one of the largest in the diocese, and 
 he is a representative of one of the three ancient lines 
 of chiefs that the whole country recognises. 
 
 I and two of the Indunas then walked to Frank's 
 hut, and the place was formally pointed out as our 
 place. It is close to a large native town, hardly less 
 in size than the one where Maconi lives. I was very 
 pleased witli what Frank had done ; he was in his 
 own hut teaching four or five Mashona boys. Frank 
 is a pure Zulu, and the only survivor of an expedition 
 that went up to the Zambesi and Lake Nyassa ; the 
 fever then got into his system, and he has suffered 
 badly from it for years, and especially lately here. 
 Instead of the low dirty Mashona huts, he has built 
 his in the Zulu fashion — large, clean, and comfortable ; 
 indeed, the second one is remarkably good for native 
 work. When I asked him whom it was for, he 
 hesitated a good deal from shyness before asking me 
 in the nicest way to take it as mine. 
 
 September ISth, Sunday. — We had an early 
 service, and then a long talk with Frank. He wants 
 one of his own people — a Zulu — to live with him, 
 and see to him when he is down with fever. I made 
 all the arrangements I could for him, and left barter 
 calico, and a large blanket for himself. He deserves 
 
THE BJS HOP'S JOURNAl., IS'JI. 
 
 77 
 
 all we can do for him, and is of great value to our 
 Church liere. He must have acted very sensibly, 
 for though Maconi had at that time refused our 
 teachers, I find he has been sending his two Indunas 
 to see Frank. This is all a great point gained, and 
 now here is another large district open to Cliristianity 
 if only England will give us means to take full 
 possession. 
 
 We had an early service, and another at 11 A.Af., 
 and walked on in the afternoon till after dark. Walk- 
 ing is often more restful, peaceful, and Sunday-like 
 than going through the parody of a day of rest that 
 one gets among heathen natives, when, from the eat- 
 ing, shouting, and laughing, there is small opportunity 
 of talking to them. 
 
 September 14^A. — We made a good journey to 
 Mosuere's town, where we stopped for an hour and 
 breakfasted, though the horrible crowding round and 
 noise of the natives that go on all the time do not 
 allow of much rest. We then went on and stopped 
 for the night at a very small village in Maguendi's 
 country. 
 
 September l^th. — I visited Gera's village. On the 
 path all the population turned out to see my horse, 
 and the chief went on with us some way, prancing 
 along in front, and carrying my rifle at his own 
 request. Their civility is no doubt increased by their 
 knowledge of Bernard, our catechist farther on. 
 When we reached his station at Maguendi's, I heard 
 excellent reports of him from the two troopers at the 
 
78 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 post Station. He has built his Init, but lias been 
 staying with them. The chief has sent his brother-in- 
 law and an Induna has sent his son to live with " 
 Bernard and be taught by hira. The chief is said to 
 be very fond him, and all is going on well. 
 
 Wilson leaves me here to take two catechists to 
 visit five chiefs to the north and leave them to settle 
 there, for it is important to have two together when 
 they are so far away from any of us. I gave them 
 their rainy season clothes and boots and a supply of 
 barter calico for their food. 
 
 Corporal Smith has been of the greatest value to 
 us here, and one wishes that white men in such a 
 country as this realised more how they help or 
 hinder Christ's work. In the afternoon I dedicated 
 Bernard's hut, and spoke for a long time with him 
 about his work. 
 
 September 16th. — Our guide was splendid to- 
 day ; he went along at a great pace, and altogether 
 the men must have walked thirty miles. I saw the 
 chief, Luseke, who had spontaneously asked for a 
 teacher and been visited by Bernard, and I promised 
 to send him one as soon as possible. 
 
 In the afternoon I sent Bernard off to the north to 
 see the chief who owns this part of the country, and 
 consequently in the evening, when we reached 
 Mashonganiika, I had to carry on a conversation 
 with him alone as best I coidd. However, he Avas 
 most amiable. The only incident to-day was a large 
 bog, into which I and my horse dropped. 
 
THE nisjfor's journal, is^i. 
 
 79 
 
 September lltJi. — We readied Fort Salisbury, 
 and Dr. Jainesoii, now Administrator, came to sec 
 me. We discussed the land (juestion, whi(;li is quite 
 as important to me as to Ireland, and arrived at a 
 most satisfactor}^ agreement. So far as the Chartered 
 Company is concerned, our Cliurcli is to have a 
 right to 0,000 acres of land wherever we place a 
 Mission. When the country develops, as it must 
 do in tlie ordinaiy course, this land will become 
 very valuable as an endowment, and should make 
 assistance from England unnecessary. But to reach 
 this financial ideal for a foreign Mission we must be 
 placed in a position to accept this offer now by 
 having a block sum of money to enable us to 
 occupy good land, and to cultivate and stock it 
 as a foundation for the future. But from another 
 point of view I look on this promise of land as 
 most important. Should the white settlers increase 
 largely in numbers, another native land question 
 must rise up here as it has done in every part of 
 South Africa. The Mashona might be in dang-er 
 of being pressed out of the more valuable agricul- 
 tural parts of the country, and those Mission lands 
 could then be used as a kind of native reserve, 
 and prevent the necessity of their leaving their 
 towns. 
 
 It is to be hoped that Europeans will never 
 be allowed to settle on the ground of the natives. 
 Besides the grave injustice of taking the land which 
 the Mashona need, a serious complication of the 
 
So THE n IS HOP'S JOURNAL, 1S<>1. 
 
 labour difTiculty would follow, as the uativcs would 
 probably leave the country. 
 
 The whole question of the land is a difficult one. 
 I consider that the land which the natives of this 
 country actually inhabit belongs to them. How 
 they came into possession of it we do not know ; we 
 found them in possession. We have no more right 
 to take any land which they actually inhabit, and 
 by unknown length of tenure own, than we should 
 have to dispossess white men holding property in 
 England on the same tenure. But they only occupy 
 a very small part of the country, and it is a 
 question how far land which they have never 
 occupied belongs to them. Though each chief 
 would claim territory to some boundary, even when 
 consecutive miles of it are uninhabited, yet I think 
 that he would see no objection to other people 
 settling there. Though it is no argument if there 
 had been anything unjust in the occupation of the 
 country, yet there can be no doubt that the presence 
 of the Chartered Company is a great benefit to the 
 Mashona, as an end has been put to Matabele raids 
 wherever they have come. Where they have not 
 been, to the south of Manicaland, I have been asked 
 that the country may be put under the protection of 
 the Great Queen, as this would keep away the Gaza 
 raids. Apart from the Matabele question, I believe 
 that the natives prefer white men living in their 
 country, so long as they are just and do not take 
 their occupied land, for the white man gives work. 
 
THE niS HOP'S JOURNAL, UOl. 
 
 8l 
 
 and ])rnvi{l('s wliat otherwise the natives wonld not 
 have. Apart from tliis, the movement of tlie white 
 man nortliwanl in Africa seems, rightly or wrongly, 
 inevitable. It is only a question as to which white 
 men shall move up ; and we, who accept things as 
 they are, are thankful that a Company, having such 
 a class of officers and such regulations as this has, is 
 the power which has moved up. The Company makes 
 for good. When it shows signs of demoralisation or 
 relaxes its righteous rules, it will be time for the 
 friends of the natives to speak. 
 
 September \8t/i. — I rode out with Mr. Selous to 
 his farm, and arranged with his farmer to choose our 
 Mission land for Fort Salisbury. The ground was 
 better than I expected. Bernard came back, saying 
 that Chiquaqua wished our missionaries for his 
 country. 
 
 I had some time with Canon Balfour, who has just 
 returned from a good walk to the north. He travels 
 very well, and gets on admirably with natives. I 
 had thought he wished for a change, but now he is 
 intent on staying on for a time longer. He has great 
 courage. The Church which he has built here is the 
 
 O 
 
 only one in the country. Major Forbes takes the 
 service when Canon Balfour is away. 
 
 September 20th. — Holy Communion at 7.30 a.m. ; 
 Church Parade for the police at 10 ; Service for the 
 townspeople at 11 a.m. ; and evening Service at 
 7 o'clock. We decided on the necessity for another 
 church, however rough, about half a mile away from 
 
82 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 the camp, wliere the bulk of the people live ; and 
 Colonel Pennefather, always an influence for good, 
 promised me £20 lor our work. Some time ago, 
 one of our most gallant English soldiers, at a 
 meeting for Mashonaland in Capetown, alluded to 
 the relative good which English wars and English 
 Missions had done in Africa. My own experience 
 would answer that the value which English officers, 
 directly and indirectly, have been to our Missions has 
 been incalculable. The hospital here is as empty now 
 as that at Umtali. 
 
 September 21.sf. — We made a good day's journey 
 along the dusty, wearying road to Fort Charter and 
 the south, up which all the waggons have come for 
 the last eighteen months. The most interesting 
 variation is in thicker or thinner dust, and in the kind 
 of dead oxen lying along the side. I am going as far 
 as Fort Charter to try and meet Mr. Sewell, a clergy- 
 man who was coming up to join the Mission with the 
 waggon by the Bechuanaland route. 
 
 We visited a village on our way, and I learnt two 
 curious Mashona customs : one, that when twin 
 babies are born both are drowned ; and another, that 
 during harvest they keep a sixth day of rest. On 
 this day the chief sends a man up a hill to say, ' It is 
 Mwali's day,' i.e. God's day, and no one works. This 
 is one of the few traces of any religion that I have 
 found among them ; but the more one knows of 
 natives the more one finds how consistently they keep 
 on concealing from strangers what they really think. 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, IH'j]. 
 
 83 
 
 September 22iid. — I met llie Wesleyau (lc))utation 
 coming up for their first attempt in Maslionaland. 
 They gave me tea, and I explained to them how many 
 of the chiefs had ah-eady accepted our missionaries. 
 
 The next day we reached Fort Charter, the carriers 
 having walked the distance of nearly seventy miles in 
 two days and a half most admirably ; and as they 
 have been scantily fed it does them all the more 
 credit. Bernard confided in me that ' the men were 
 very fond of me,' so I suppose they do not mind hard 
 work and little food. 
 
 September 2Uh. — We left Fort Charter soon after 
 five this morning, as I can hear no news of Mr. Sewell. 
 Sleeping that night at Umtigeza's and making arrange- 
 ments for sending a missionary there, we went on 
 another day and a half to an interesting chief, 
 Gambisa. He replied to my question about a house 
 for a teacher, ' Who should build it if I did not ? ' 
 and to another question, ' I am only a little child, 
 how can I answer you ? ' He said later that he was 
 afraid other teachers might be sent instead of ours, 
 and that he would receive none who were not brought 
 by me or Bernard. I do not know what suggested 
 this to him. 
 
 There is a tree here which they call their 'praying 
 tree.' It is chosen by their medicine man, and then 
 surrounded by a fence. 
 
 The sun was very hot, and by a grave misfortune 
 after leaving the village we found a dead antelope. 
 The men, of course, wished for the meat, and hence 
 
 g3 
 
84 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891 
 
 confusion for the rest of the day. The guide stayed 
 beliind with tlie antelope : we took different roads : 
 we could not camp near a stream, as the men who 
 came on with me had no food : and finally we had to 
 go on in the dark. Happily we met two men who 
 showed us a short cut over a hill to a village, so that 
 I got imder my blankets about eleven o'clock in a 
 filthy corner under some rocks near Makwarimba's 
 town. I felt tliat when the people began to fight and 
 wrangle all round with my men about the payment 
 for bringing some wood for the fires my temper was 
 at its lowest ebb. Eighteen hours of work is too long- 
 when travelling is as tiring as this is. 
 
 September 27th. — We left our dirty camp, and 
 reached another village that is an almost perfect type 
 of the Mashona country. There is a brook here at 
 our feet, and beyond it the beautifully green grass rises 
 in a gentle slope for a quarter of a mile to the base 
 of the great rock-like liill. The sides are almost 
 perpendicular, covered with trees and broken boulders, 
 and the path winds up in and out among them. 
 Eight on the top, standing clearly out against the 
 sky-line, are the conical-roofed huts, the brown of the 
 thatch and clay contrasting forcibly, as every shade 
 does in this clear air, with the blue beyond and the 
 green or crimson of the trees below. It belongs to 
 the chief Makouromouri. 
 
 September 2Sth. — We had an interesting day, as 
 we reached my former friends at Sipiro's, who con- 
 cealed us from the Gaza tribute collectors in 1888. 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 is 
 
 He was very pleased to see me again, and became 
 most friendly, saying, ' You and Selous are the only 
 two people known in this country ; I have given him 
 one of my sons, and I will give you another.' I 
 explained that I could not take the boy to live with 
 
 M\KOTJROMOURl's VILLAGE. 
 
 me till I returned from England ; but I was very 
 pleased, as not only shall we have the boy to teach, 
 and chiefs' sons represent the highest calibre in the 
 tribe, but it is one of the greatest marks of trust that 
 the chief could have given us. 
 
 Sipiro was much interested to know how I was 
 going to England, and how ships could be made to 
 go on the water. He said it was a small thing to 
 build a hut for the catechist, and that of course he 
 
86 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, IHOl. 
 
 would do it, ; but would I not choose the piece of 
 <ijround ? The mention of a future life generally 
 makes natives laugh, but Sipiro and his people were 
 very sensible when I spoke about it to them. They 
 are tlie remains of the great Barotse race, who used 
 to hold the paramount power over the whole of 
 this country till their cruelty drove the sub-chiefs 
 to revolt, and they were driven out. Sipiro is un- 
 doubtedly one of the native gentlemen one meets 
 with at times. 
 
 To the w^est of this are some of the largest iron- 
 works in the country. The Mashona difier from all 
 other races in Southern Africa in the cleverness of 
 their manual labour, and I believe they could be 
 taught almost anything. They are born miners, and 
 get the iron out of the ground with tools made by 
 themselves. There is one place Mr. Selous has called 
 Iron Mine Hill, and paths lead from it in all directions. 
 When the Mashona have got the iron out they smelt 
 it in very primitive but very effective little furnaces. 
 Those I saw were from two to three feet high, and 
 placed in a row of five or six together under one 
 long shed ; the bellows behind each furnace were 
 made of goat skins, and worked up and down by men 
 sitting on the ground. They use charcoal for fuel, 
 and put lum])s of fat on the iron ore itself. When 
 smelted the iron is taken to the smith of the village 
 — in one case I know he was the chief — and with no 
 tools except stones of different sizes he beats and 
 shapes it into assegais, hoes, the iron notes of their 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 
 
 musical instruments, or the bangles for their women. 
 The assegais have a liigh reputation, and may be 
 equal to the second quality of English steel. One 
 could imagine Tubal Cain at work witli just such 
 appliances as these. 
 
 After leaving Sipiro, the next day we came across 
 some Mashona putting up their nets for a large game 
 drive, who ran away when they first saw us. They 
 had chosen a very narrow valley, and right across its 
 narrowest part they had stretched their nets, beauti- 
 fully made of bark, and about five feet high. The 
 drive itself I could not wait to see. 
 
 Presently in the middle of another group of 
 Mashonas we found a white man, looking very 
 miserable and half-dazed. When I spoke he asked 
 if he were going right for 'Mpanda's. He was going 
 in the opposite direction, and had been lost for five 
 days in the bush after wandering away from the main 
 road, and was starving when he saw the natives, who 
 were very good and did all they could for him. I 
 offered to take hira on with us and feed him. but he 
 said he was tired and would follow me. It is 
 extraordinary how these people get on at all, for 
 one can hardly imagine the madness of leaving the 
 track in a horrible lion country, and without a rifle. 
 
 September oOth. — We started at 5 a.m., but soon 
 after my horse and the donkey were lying side by side, 
 stuck fast in a morass, with only Masliona to help, so 
 it took some time to get them out. These morasses, I 
 find, are often under the finer and shorter grass The 
 
ss 
 
 THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 water appears to lie on the surface, but is so hidden 
 by the thick green grass that man and beast are 
 often in before it can be detected. 
 
 We pushed on till about four miles from Umtah, 
 when a trooper met us, and I learnt that the site of 
 the township had been moved to the spot where we 
 then were. This is an unexpected blow, as it leaves 
 all the buildings we have been working so hard at 
 too far away from the new township to be of practical 
 use for present needs. It means new expense and 
 new trouble, and another briar on a not over-smooth 
 road. Mr. Jagger, Bennett, and my old half-caste 
 servant Edward were waiting at the Mission huts ; 
 they had been coming up with our waggon by the 
 Bechuanaland road, but thinking they could push 
 on more quickly had walked ahead. Mr. Sewell 
 remained with the ox-waggon. I am very sorry not to 
 see him before leaving, as I wished to arrange matters 
 personally with him for the next six months. 
 
 The nurses are in their new huts, very bright and 
 cheerful in spite of the many discomforts and priva- 
 tions they have to bear, and which no doubt they feel 
 all the more as this is the healthy season of the year, 
 when there is but little work for them to do. But it 
 is most fortunate they came up when they did, as 
 they have time to get things in order before the rainy 
 season, and to travel then would have been im- 
 possible. 
 
 The next few days were busy ones. The Surveyor- 
 General was at Umtali, and he settled our Mission 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1801. 
 
 89 
 
 land, &c. with inc. In addition to our farm, where 
 we have been working, and where I hope to liave 
 native industrial training schools, the Chartered 
 Company liave allotted perhaps the best piece of 
 ground in the new townshij) to the Mission ; the 
 hospital and the nurses' huts are to be close under it, 
 and the site for the school is to be rather out of the 
 town, so as to have a playground, as we are making 
 preparations for white children here. All this is 
 only one among the many acts of kindness and 
 courtesy done for us by the officers of the Chartered 
 Company, wlio have indeed helped us in many ways. 
 Apart from one's conlidence in Dr. Jameson as the 
 Administrator of the country, I sliall never f(jrget 
 his personal kindness to myself. 
 
 October Uli. — We all received the Holy Com- 
 munion together in my hut at 8 o'clock; afterwards 
 I walked to the police camp and had service there, 
 then to the nurses' for lunch and servi(;e, and then 
 back here for evening service. 
 
 The next day William Wilson came back from 
 having planted down the two native catecliists to the 
 north ; he has seen the five chiefs whom they are to 
 visit. His diary of the journey is a model one — it is 
 only an account of work done and difficidties met. 
 He does not even mention that he has severely 
 injured himself in getting his donkeys over the rocks 
 on his way. 
 
 Good news has come of Bernard, who is seeing to 
 the building of teachers' huts at two more chiefs' by 
 
CJO THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 their own desire ; and he is in liigh favour with 
 Maguendi's people, as he has just satisfactorily settled 
 a cattle dispute for them. 
 
 Before leaving I received letters from two officers 
 of the Chartered Company, saying it was wonderful 
 what rapid strides the Mission had made under 
 adverse circumstances ; and another, speaking of the 
 position that the Mission has gained, of the large 
 extent of country visited, of the number of im- 
 portant chiefs who are now its friends, adds : ' It 
 seems to have been grasped by the native mind, and 
 to be looked up to and respected by them as a 
 power in the land.' 
 
 We then walked eastward to 'Mpanda's, near the 
 sea, in eight and a half days, having travelled nearly 
 1,300 miles since I left it in May. It was terribly 
 sad to see there hundreds of pounds' worth of stores, 
 that ought to have been our supply for the year, 
 lying useless, because of the impossibility of getting 
 them up to Umtali. The unexpected failure for 
 the present of the Pungwe route has, indeed, cost 
 the diocese heavily. I sent back as many loads of 
 provisions for the Mission workers at Umtali as I could 
 find natives to carry up ; every village round was 
 searched for carriers, and all the gold that I could 
 collect I sent to George Wilson, English sovereigns 
 being the only current coin to pay carriers with. 
 
 I have been a good deal troubled by what is 
 being said about supplying the natives with drink. 
 It is so remunerative that we can hardly hope that 
 
THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL, 1891. 
 
 the attem])t will not be made ; but the Chartered 
 Company have spoken decisively about it — no native 
 is to be supplied with drink within their jurisdiction. 
 Those who care for their dark-skinned fellow-meu 
 will uphold the Company in this their righteous 
 regulation, and assist them to suppress any attempt 
 at breaking it. Terrible as are the horrors of the 
 slave trade, the injury done to the natives by the 
 importation of drink is ultimately the greater evil 
 of the two. 
 
 After spending two Sundays at Beira, where we 
 had services, I was taken off by H.M.S. Bacoon, and 
 landed at the comparatively civilised Delagoa Bay in 
 time to hold service there on Sunday, November 
 22nd. 
 
 END OF THE BISHOP's JOURNAL FOR 1891. 
 
92 
 
 EXTRACTS ROM 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF MISS BLENNERHASSET, 
 ONE OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND MISSION NURSES AT 
 UMTALI. 
 
 Aprtl 16th. — We, Beryl Welby, Lucy Sleeman, and Rose 
 Blenuerliasset, left Capetown en route for Mashonaland to 
 nurse there for the Bishop. 
 
 May 7 til. — Durban. Alas, we are still here! The 
 Bishop is going to the Pungwe in the first steamer, but 
 it is strongly urged on him and on us that we had better 
 wait for the next steamer, and then go up under the care of 
 Dr. Doyle Glanville, who is attached to the Mission. This is 
 decided on, as we shall go up country quicker in the end. 
 
 Sundai/, June litJt. — 'Mpanda's. It would be difficult 
 to give an idea of the dirt and squalor of this place. The 
 camp is pitched on a mud bank between the Pungwe and 
 a stagnant creek. We got the tent the Bishop had left 
 ready for us ; it had been used meanwhile for some sick 
 men, but a hut was run up instead for them, as they were 
 now convalescent but tentless. Dr. Todd, from H.M.S. 
 Magicienne asked us this morning to help with the sick, of 
 whom he has taken charge. Dr. Wilson, the Company's 
 doctor, being seriously ill with fever. Yesterday morning 
 two natives were found dead. We found 23 in two very 
 dirty miserable sheds. All were very ill, some in great 
 danger. We began to clean out the sheds ourselves, when 
 a European sent two of his natives to do it. We fed the 
 natives every three hours to-day, and I hope we shall lose 
 none. Dr. Todd's kindness to the natives is delightful 
 to see. 
 
AfISS BLENNERHASSET'S JOURNAL. 
 
 93 
 
 Mondial, June X^tlJt. — Couldn't Rloop last m'fflit l)Coanse 
 of lions roa>ring about half a niilo from camp, where they 
 were devouring a bullock. The rats were troublesome too 
 — they are enormous, and run over us at night, often 
 dropping on our heads from the roof of the tent ; but they 
 are not so fierce as English rats — their snouts are less 
 sharp— they are more like gigantic field-mice. 
 
 We went to-day to see a so-called road, which is merely 
 a rude track along which some grass has been burnt. A 
 runner brought letters from the Bishop, who gives direc- 
 tions for our getting carriers, and being carried up in 
 * machilas,' in the Portuguese fashion. It is, we are told, 
 a walk of 160 miles. We are anxious to get on. 
 
 Mondaij, June ^dth. — Since last entry most of our sick 
 have become convalescent. Out of 42 Europeans at 
 'Mpanda's 38 have had fever. Some working-men, brick- 
 layers, &c., who had come up with their savings, spent 
 everything at 'Mpanda's, unable to get on, and at last 
 turned back with no money and with shattered health. 
 'Mpanda's is crammed with stores of all kinds ; the owners 
 of them can't get on. To-day the Bishop's man, Wilkins, 
 came back from a kraal about fifty miles away, and brought 
 us 23 natives — 16 able-bodied and seven almost children. 
 We have given up all idea of ' machilas,' as we want to try 
 and take provisions wp, and each ' machila ' requires four 
 boys. We have engaged some Portuguese-speaking boys, 
 and hope to be ready to leave to-morrow. There is no 
 change in the camp, and it is very difficult to get money to 
 pay the natives. They only understand two coins — a rupee 
 and ' umpoundo,' which is £1. They would rather have a 
 rupee, value Is. 8d., than 5s. 
 
 Wednesday, July 1st. — We are away from 'Mpanda's at 
 last ! We planned to encamp last night about four miles 
 from 'Mpanda's, and begin our walk in earnest to-day. Our 
 departure wa s delayed in many ways, the natives being very 
 tiresome, rushing back to the canteen to drink, refusing 
 
94 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 
 
 to start, &c., so that it was getting dark as we filed 
 after the long line of carriers down to a point where we 
 were to cross the Pungwe. One little canoe, dug out of a 
 tree, was there to meet us, and a strange little shrivelled 
 old man paddled us over. We sat on the edges of the 
 canoe, there heing no seats or sticks across, and the boat 
 was too narrow to admit of our sitting at the bottom of it. 
 We were in mortal terror, afraid to breathe, for a sudden 
 movement would easily upset such a canoe, and the river, 
 as we knew, swarms with crocodiles. It was a great relief 
 to be on terra firnia again, and to watch the natives and the 
 loads coming over. We had now arrived at the kraal 
 where we were to spend the night. It was already dark, 
 and we proceeded to hunt up the bundle containing candles, 
 lanterns, &c., but it was not to be found. To our horror 
 we discovered that the boy who carried this special load had 
 not come on ; he had got tipsy, and remained ' somewhere.' 
 There was hardly any wood to be had, but we made as good 
 a fire as we could, and took the cnntretemjys gaily. It was 
 hopeless to try and pitch a tent in such darkness and con- 
 fusion, so we rolled ourselves in our blankets and slept by 
 the camp fire. We could hear lions roaring in the distance, 
 and the weird cry of the hyena. Towards morning we 
 were roused from troubled sleep by frightful screams and 
 lamentations, a sort of dismal chant, broken by long sob- 
 bing screams ; it was really a blood-curdling sound, and 
 for some moments we were afraid to move or speak. At 
 last, seeing that our natives were paying little or no atten- 
 tion to it, we made inquiries, and found that one of the 
 inhabitants of the kraal had just died, and his people were 
 keening over him, much as mourners do in Ireland. As 
 we got up we were requested to go away to one end of the 
 kraal, and not cross the path along which the body was 
 carried in a very ingenious sort of wickerwork shell. When 
 it had departed we started on our walk in earnest. 
 
 Friday, July 'drd. — We arrived here, Sarmento, to-day. 
 
MISS BLENNERHASSET'S JOURNAL. 
 
 95 
 
 a little after 1 p.m. Wg are now forty-fivc miles from 
 'Mpanda's. Yesterday's walk was very trying ; there was 
 no water for nearly twelve miles ; the soil was loose, sandy, 
 and for every step forward we seemed to slide two back. 
 Late in the afternoon we reached a shelter built of grass, 
 where we decided on spending the night. We found a 
 young fellow from 'Mpanda's there, suffering from the 
 effects of fever ; he seemed still to be rather light-headed. 
 His friend had followed a honey-bird into the bush, and 
 came back soon after with the honey in a sort of palm-leaf 
 basket. During the night the lions came down to drink at 
 the swampy pool in front of the shelter, and they made a 
 terrific noise. It seemed very strange to be so near all 
 these wild creatures, with not even the slenderest door or 
 mat to shut them out of our hut. In the morning the 
 spoor of an elephant was seen. I wish we could have seen 
 him and the lions — from a distance. 
 
 To-day's walk was uneventful. The path crossed a 
 green park-like country, with good-sized trees dotted about, 
 and clumps of palm trees. We saw an immense quantity 
 of game, antelopes, and buffaloes. The natives became 
 much excited ; they flung down their loads and rushed after 
 the buffaloes with their assegais. They killed one, and 
 then followed us into Sarmento with huge lumps of gory 
 flesh bound on their loads, and covered with blood. 
 
 Sarmento is beautifully situated on a sort of plateau 
 terrace, with the river dashing over rocks below, and woods 
 all round. But the village is dirty beyond belief. 
 
 July 7th. — In the woods, rain pouring, and great trouble 
 with our carriers. At the first halt, a few hours from 
 Sarmento, they refused to go any further. The ' Inkoos,' 
 or chief, a very picturesque person, with his wool plaited 
 into at least a hundred little tails, went off and hid in the 
 woods. Towards evening he returned, and asked for 
 blankets for all his men, pointing to ours as if inclined to 
 take them. Dr. Glanville sent him away, and he and his 
 
96 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 
 
 mow rotired in p;roiit ill-liumour. The next morning the 
 Inlvoos and men came and deposited their money at our 
 feet, but after long persuasion were induced to take it up 
 again and go on with us. 
 
 JidylOth. — Shemoios. Arrived here an hour or two ago. 
 Stopped to breakfast at Mandigo's, a deserted Portuguese 
 camp. Natives poured in from neighbouring kraals. The 
 women made us presents of meal. Wherever we go the 
 natives display great curiosity about us, watching us whilst 
 we eat, and often following us to some distance. They 
 used to declare at 'Mpanda's that the white women never 
 eat, because their waists left no room for food to go down. 
 At Mandigo's we met a native with letters, and found 
 one for us from the Bishop, who supposes us to be at 
 'Mpanda's. 
 
 All round here is very, very pretty. 
 
 Jiih/ 13///. — j\[assi-Kessi. Here we are after quite an 
 adventure. All our boys, except four Portuguese natives, 
 fled in the night at Shemoios ! It was wet and dismal, 
 and at first we were almost in despair ; but, after a short 
 discussion, we three decided on pushing on with Dr. 
 Glanville and three natives. We took only a change of 
 things with us, the smallest possible amount of food, and 
 we left most of our blankets behind. Our few men went 
 splendidly, and we got over the ground very well indeed. 
 A few miles beyond Shemoios we came upon a troop of 
 zebra, who did not allow our presence to disturb them very 
 much. Last night we encamped outside Massi-Kessi. One 
 of my boots was almost torn in two by the stump of a tree. 
 
 We have sent on a runner to the Bishop to tell him of 
 our approach, and mean to encamp a few miles beyond this 
 place. 
 
 July 14.th. — At last — Umtali ! Yesterday was a day 
 of misfortune, for on leaving Massi-Kessi we found that 
 the boys had lost their way, and were not even sure of 
 the direction of Umtali. When we halted they went to 
 
MISS BLENNERHASSET'S JOURNAL. 
 
 97 
 
 explore the neighbourhood ; but we must have gone far out 
 of our way, for we walked rapidly since G,30 a.m., halting 
 only once for half an hour, and we did not reach this place 
 till 5 P.M. We climbed bare slippery hillsides; the heat 
 was intense, and we could find no water till late in the 
 afternoon. We had nothing to eat, the provisions having 
 come to an end the day before. However, we had .a small 
 quantity of bovril, which we drank when we found a stream. 
 We almost despaired of reaching Umtali, and it w'as with a 
 feeling of intense relief that we suddenly saw the police 
 flag afar off. The Bishop met us at a river below his 
 camp ; he had only got our letter an hour or two before we 
 arrived. He gave us up his hut, and made us as comfort- 
 able as possible. I feel very ill, and fear I have got the 
 fever. 
 
 Saturday, August 15th. — We have now been at Umtali a 
 month, and are still at Sabi Ophir camp, the guests of Mr. 
 Campion. The Bishop has gone to his Mission farm — a 
 place about three miles from here, very picturesquely 
 situated. The Mission-house will be on the top of a craggy 
 mount commanding a beautiful view of the valley. I have 
 had a rather bad attack of fever ; Sister Beryl a slight one ; 
 and the Bishop has had some very sharp ones. The 
 Company are building our hospital huts about half a mile 
 from the camp, and the doctor's alone on a bare hillside. 
 There is difficulty in obtaining native labour, and one does 
 not wonder, as one hears so many stories of the way in 
 which the natives have been ill-treated and cheated by 
 some of the white men. The Bishop has more natives 
 than he needs offering to work for him, and his natives do 
 not run away. On the Mission farm, if the natives don't 
 like it, and stay for a few days only, they are paid for what 
 they have done, and part on good terms. They are neither 
 pampered nor made much of there, and have to work very 
 hard, but they are treated with perfect justice, and never 
 knocked about. 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 
 
 No doubt the native has great powers of aggravation, 
 and the Uunders they commit, the confusion they create, 
 are still more irritating by their indifference to results, 
 whether good or bad. A shrug of the shoulder, an ' I 
 kona,' represents all they feel on every subject excepting 
 food. On the other hand I have found them astonishingly 
 honest. We never by any chance lock up anything, and 
 have never missed even a spoonful of sugar, though sugar 
 is a great temptation to them. 
 
 We are still without luggage of any kind, excepting 
 what we brought up with us — merely a change each. A 
 man who contracts to manage transport took our things 
 and most of the Bishop's stores away from 'Mpanda's on 
 the 6th of July, with waggons and eighty oxen. We hear 
 that all the oxen are dead and the waggons stuck on the 
 road. I fear our journey up and the bringing up of stores 
 has cost the Bishop four or five times as much as there 
 was reason to suppose it would when we set out. 
 
 Monday, August 24:th. — To-day we heard with surprise 
 and regret of the death of Dr. Doyle Glanville from fever 
 and exhaustion. He was apparently a very strong, healthy 
 man, but towards the end of our walk up appeared to 
 suffer from exhaustion. He would not take any medicine. 
 He was ill at Umtali after his arrival. He left the Bishop 
 for Fort Salisbury, and died by the roadside a few miles 
 from his destination. Three natives were with him. 
 
 The erratic post arrived to-day with the first English 
 letters we have had since we left Natal. They were dated May 
 1891. The mail-bags come in different ways. Sometimes 
 they dangle from a native's assegai, sometimes they go by 
 waggon at the rate of a very few miles a day, sometimes 
 they tear down by runners. You may get a letter dated 
 July before you receive one dated May. Natives have got 
 tired of the mail, and stuck it into the thatch of a roof 
 or hung it on a tree and gone {iway. Orders marked 
 
MISS BLENNERHASSET'S JOURNAL. 99 
 
 * Urgent ' wore found in this way by a police officer weeks 
 and weeks after he should have received them. 
 
 Three of our trunks arrived to-day and the Bishop's 
 medicine chest. The latter has been broken open. We are 
 assured that the branch of a tree took off the lock, tore out 
 five screws, and split the lid evenly into two parts. The 
 branches of African trees are endowed with marvellous 
 powers. A number of bottles of medicine have been taken 
 out of the chest, and an excellent little surgical case — quite 
 new — has disappeared, together with waterproof sheets, &c. 
 Our remaining boxes are ' somewhere ' in the open between 
 this and 'Mpanda's. 
 
 October 25^/(.— We walked over to the new township, 
 which is rushing on. The temporary hospital is up ; we are 
 to have five huts with a covered way between, and a kitchen 
 with two pantry places. Then there is to be another 
 covered way to the two hospital wards, one for civilians, 
 holding fifteen beds, and one for the police, holding five 
 beds ; close to these is the dispensary. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 SpottUicoode <t Co. Printers, New-street Square, London. 
 
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