miles, and our train made it in twenty-four hours. If there is a
town between Mafeking and Bulawayo, we passed through it during the
night; we stopped at a good many lonely stations, but saw no towns.
And we passed but one train on the way: a passenger train coming from
Victoria Falls.... We arrived at Bulawayo this morning at 9:30, on
time to the second, although we left Johannesburg and Mafeking late.
We were taken to the Grand Hotel in an automobile, of which the hotel
porter was the driver, and the manager met us with the question: “Mr.
and Miss Howe?” You travel by schedule here, and your coming is known
in advance.... Last night the weather was chilly, although the
afternoon was almost insufferably hot and dusty. All day yesterday we
traveled through a country covered with scrubby trees; trees so bent
and twisted that they looked as though they had rheumatism in every
limb and joint. This morning we awoke in Rhodesia, and the country
improved in character, though the land was still of the Arizona kind
rather than of the Iowa or eastern Kansas kind. In Rhodesia we saw
larger cornfields than we saw yesterday, but the fields were many miles
apart. Corn is the staple crop all over Africa, but the corn I have
seen was small.... Africa is an enormous country; when it comes to
size, we must take off our hats to it. But nine hundred miles in the
interior, you do not find a city like Chicago; the fourth or fifth city
in the world, and built up from agriculture. Africa was known before
Columbus discovered America; had it been as rich agriculturally as
North America, the negroes would have been chased out by farmers as
promptly as the Indians were chased out of North America. In Africa
today there are negro tribes as wild as were the wildest tribes
hundreds of years ago. There is here a tribe known as the Bushmen.
Their language is a collection of clicks and grunts, these last, absent
in the other African dialects, being said to bear a resemblance to the
different cries of the baboon. The Bushman is so much like the baboon
that he has no conception of right or wrong; it is as impossible to
civilize him as it is impossible to civilize the monkey. He is the
missing link between the monkey most like man, and the human animal. He
can no more understand the rights of property than can the lion or the
jackal; theft is not a crime with him, because he cannot appreciate
that theft is wrong. So it has been found necessary to drive him to
the wildest and most inaccessible sections of the country, and, when
he appears in civilization, is hunted as ruthlessly as are cunning and
dangerous wild animals. No Bushman has ever been known to cultivate
a field; he lives entirely by hunting animals, wild berries, roots,
etc., and no white man has ever been able to understand the Bushman’s
language.... Africa is behind us in civilization because its land
is poorer. In many of our best states it was possible in early times,
before fences were introduced, to plow a furrow hundreds of miles
long, and every foot of the land represented a rich, deep, black soil
that would produce marvelous crops without irrigation or fertilizing.
There is no such land in Africa; the abundance of such land in North
America explains why it has a hundred million progressive people, and
is everywhere known as the best country the sun shines on. Possibly
modesty should cause us to boast less, but the big talk we use in
Fourth of July addresses is not far from the truth.... Do Americans
boast a good deal? On the contrary, I sometimes fear they habitually
deny nearly every good thing that may be said about their country.
In Johannesburg I was given a big bundle of American newspapers and
magazines, and read them in coming here. I saw no boasting; on the
contrary, I read dozens of sensational scandals that were in the
main baseless. One worthy and useful old gentleman, I read, is being
harassed by an impudent investigating committee, although so ill that
he cannot speak above a whisper. I read that a prominent American
manufacturer, who certainly deserves well of his country, has been
sentenced to jail and fined $50,000, on a charge that seems trifling.
I read of a case wherein a negro assaulted a worthy white woman in
the South. The papers are determined to make out that the woman was
assaulted and cut with a knife by her husband, who caught her flirting
with another man. The woman and her husband, and all their friends
who were about them at the time, swear in court that the assault was
committed by a mulatto, whom none of them knew; there is no sworn
evidence whatever to the contrary. It was rumored for months before
the trial began that a newspaper reporter was smuggled into the office
of the prosecuting attorney when the husband and wife were examined,
soon after the assault, and that the reporter heard the husband say
incriminating things to his wife, during the temporary absence of the
prosecuting attorney; but at the trial, the reporter was a witness,
and swore to no such incident. At this distance, it looks as though
the gossips have the assistance of the courts and the newspapers in
making good their vicious and untruthful tales.... Is this boasting?
Is it not, on the contrary, making ourselves mean when we are usually
creditable and decent?... To a hurried visitor, Bulawayo seems even
handsomer, and duller, than Bloemfontein, the old Dutch town in the
Orange Free State which I admired so much. The Grand Hotel here is
excellent, and the town clean and handsome, but I see little business
going on. It may be that the farmers come in some other day in the
week, but I wonder at and enjoy the quietness in Bulawayo. So far I
have seen no great number of pretty women, who always distinguish a
dull town, but possibly they have been kept in by a rain which began
falling soon after my arrival. Work is in progress here on a government
building which would do credit to a state capital in America, but this
not the capital of Rhodesia; that honor belongs to Salisbury, three
hundred miles away. The new building will be occupied by officials of
the British company which owns Rhodesia, and the postoffice.... When
the Union Pacific Railway was built, in the days immediately following
the Civil War, the government gave the company a strip of land on both
sides of the track, as a reward for developing the country. In like
manner, the English government gave Rhodesia to certain capitalists,
except that in this case the capitalists govern the country; they
collect taxes, try criminals, hang them when necessary, collect
customs, and otherwise administer public affairs. The police and
militia of Rhodesia serve the Rhodesia company; when a man buys public
land, he buys it of the Rhodesia company; but back of the Rhodesia
company, John Bull is a silent but powerful figure, and nothing can be
done without his approval and consent. India was governed many years by
the East India company, but finally Victoria was made Empress of India.
Rhodesia will eventually become a member of the South-African union,
certainly; it may be even closer than that to the British crown....
Flies and mosquitoes terrorize me in Africa. There is a fly here which
gives the dreaded Sleeping Sickness with its bite, and there is a
mosquito which gives you typhoid. I strike at both insects as promptly
as the average man strikes at a moth miller when around home. I
never knew a man so dignified that he wouldn’t take a smash at a moth
miller.... The Bulawayo newspaper, issued this morning, tells of the
depredations of lions in the surrounding country. Several cattle and
one native were killed. Let American country editors think of exciting
country correspondence of that kind.
THURSDAY, MARCH 27.—Thirty miles from Bulawayo is a district known as
the Matopo Hills, one hundred miles long by twenty-five broad. During
the Matabele rebellion of 1896‒7, these rough hills of granite proved
impregnable when occupied by the natives, as they are full of passes
and gigantic caves, and occasional fertile but almost inaccessible
valleys. Cecil Rhodes loved this district, because of its wildness,
and one of his last requests was that his body be buried on top of the
highest of the Matopo Hills. We visited his grave today, during the
course of an automobile ride. There is no monument over his grave; a
simple flat stone covers it. Two hundred feet away, and on top of the
same hill, is a monument “In Memory of Brave Men.” It is a huge affair
of granite, in memory of Major Allan Wilson and his party, who fell on
the Shangaui river in 1893. It is a common habit of discreet men to
erect handsome monuments over the graves of foolhardy adventurers, and
call them brave. Thousands of men lost their lives in order that Cecil
Rhodes might become noted, and be the subject of statues at Kimberley,
Johannesburg, Bulawayo, etc. Other noted men have sacrificed the
lives of their followers with equal recklessness.... On the four
sides of the notable monument near Rhodes’s grave are bronze panels
showing scenes from various campaigns in Rhodesia; the figures are
of heroic size, and executed with so much faithfulness by John Tweed
that many of the faces may be recognized.... From Rhodes’s grave,
the Matopo Hills may be seen in all their remarkable desolation. The
place looks like hell with the fires out; like the world upside down.
Rhodes had a model farm of 115,000 acres just outside the Hills, and
spent $150,000 on an irrigating dam. He expected this dam to irrigate
2,000 acres, but it actually irrigates less than 700. Rhodes spent
considerable time on this farm, and frequently went to the high hill
where his body was afterwards buried. In moods of despondency, when he
knew his illness must soon result in death, he spent several moonlight
nights on the spot where his grave is now located. Several attendants
accompanied him, but he said little to them; he silently looked around
at what is probably the most majestic scene of desolation in the world.
Rhodes was less than fifty when he died, and his thoughts about the
vanities of life would have been exceedingly interesting in print. He
was one of the remarkable characters of recent history, and I shall
long remember him; especially because of a statue erected in his memory
at the crossing of two principal streets in Bulawayo. This statue is
a wonderfully lifelike reproduction of a man, and I have repeatedly
looked at it with more interest than I usually look at works of
art.... On the journey to the Matopo Hills, we saw frequent bunches
of wild baboons; in one lot there must have been twenty or thirty.
These animals are a nuisance to farmers, as they kill sheep; it is
therefore necessary to hunt them with dogs.... On the way to the
Matopo Hills is a hotel. We ate lunch there on our return trip, and a
bride and groom started out ahead of us, in an automobile. We finally
overtook them, but the bride and groom were utterly unconscious of our
presence, and hugged and kissed most of the way to Bulawayo. A mother
and daughter, traveling acquaintances, accompanied us, and the daughter
was particularly interested in the actions of the bride and groom.
Later, when we punctured a tire, and stopped for repairs, the girl
confessed that she is to be married in a few weeks. She is the daughter
of a big farmer in the Transvaal, and will marry a young banker. A
banker is as particular about marrying a rich woman as an army officer.
Ever know a banker or an army officer to marry a poor girl?... The
bride and groom in front of us greatly interested our party, and we
laughed until our sides ached. They were fooling the driver of their
automobile, but utterly unconscious of five spectators in the rear. In
fooling one man, you are usually unconscious of several others who are
watching you.
[Illustration: Block House used by the English in the Boer War
Entrance to Suez Canal
Native children, South Africa
Native Village, Rhodesia
An African King meeting with his Cabinet]
FRIDAY, MARCH 28.—The mother and daughter with whom we have been
traveling several days, Mrs. and Miss Meek, live fifteen miles off
the railroad between Durban and Johannesburg, on a farm of twenty
thousand acres. Mr. Meek, the husband and father, goes in principally
for sheep, of which he has many thousand head, but he does general
farming as well, and has two hundred and fifty natives on his farms,
counting women and children. These live in small villages or kraals
on the land, and both Mrs. Meek and her daughter speak the Kaffir
language. Some of the Kaffir men on the Meek farm have six wives;
the farm foreman has that number, and Mrs. Meek says he is a very
reliable and capable man, in spite of his love affairs. The foreman has
twenty-eight children, and each of his six wives lives in a different
hut. When he takes a new wife, there is no marriage ceremony; he simply
invites his friends to a wedding feast, which the other wives prepare.
He buys his wives, usually paying ten head of cattle each; there are
no love preliminaries, except that occasionally a young girl comes to
the foreman’s kraal, and remains until he takes her as his wife. He
is a prosperous man, and prosperous men are everywhere popular with
the girls. The wives of the foreman get along very well together;
they have always been accustomed to the system of plural wives, and
do not seem to object to it. The children living in the kraals, Mrs.
Meek says, are very healthy; more so than white children living in
modern houses in the same vicinity. The grass-covered huts in which
the natives live are less liable to leak in rainy weather than the
houses of the whites, which are almost universally covered in South
Africa with corrugated iron. Mr. Meek pays his native workmen about
$2.50 per month, and board, providing they are reliable and steady.
Their board consists of a certain amount of shelled corn; about all
they eat is corn-meal porridge, and their idea of luxury is to have
brown sugar to sprinkle over it. Most of them have gardens, and Mr.
Meek loans them oxen and plows for cultivating them. A young native boy
who herds cattle gets seventy-two cents a month. The native workmen
employed on the Meek farm have their porridge ground and cooked by a
native employed for the purpose, who never gives them too much, because
the work of grinding corn in a handmill is a considerable task, and
this task falls to the cook. The natives on the farm go to church once
on Sunday, but they seem to attend the services as a means of seeing
and being seen rather than because they are religious. A railroad is
building toward Mr. Meek’s farm, and lately he refused $20 an acre
for it. I am somewhat confused about the yield of corn per acre in
South Africa, as the people always say a field yields so many bags per
morgen; a morgen being a little over two acres, and a bag holding a
little less than three bushels. But it may be safely stated that the
yield of corn in no part of South Africa is equal to the yield in the
corn belt in our section. Disastrous drouths are also very common; corn
has been almost a failure for the past three seasons. I have not seen a
good field of corn in South Africa. But Mr. Meek is a very prosperous
farmer, because of his sheep, cattle and horses. He also milks a good
many cows, and sends the cream to the railroad, “five hours” from his
farm: distances are always computed here by hours, and not by miles.
Five miles from his farm-house is a country village without a railroad,
and there he does his “trading.” He is making an exhibit of stock at
the Johannesburg fair, and his wife and daughter are very anxious to
know whether they took any prizes.... Mr. Meek was born of English
parents, but has never been to England. During the war he would not
fight the English, and he would not fight the Boers, as his wife is of
Dutch descent. So he left home, and went into Natal. His wife remained
on the farm throughout the war, and was constantly surrounded by troops
of the contending forces. Once, when they had an artillery battle,
the shells flew over her house for hours; some of the shells fell in
her door-yard, and, exploding, tore down fences and outhouses. Her
children were away at school when the war began, and did not come home
for eighteen months. Mrs. Meek managed to smuggle a good deal of the
farm live-stock into Natal, where her husband received it and cared
for it on land rented for the purpose. In smuggling sheep and cattle
out of the country, Mrs. Meek’s main reliance was the native foreman,
the wretch who has six wives; he was as faithful and efficient as it
is possible for a servant to be. Occasionally the English talked of
sending Mrs. Meek to the concentration camp, and burning her house, but
she was always able to coax them out of the notion.... She has a
native cook, a man, and pays him a dollar a week. The native women do
her washing and ironing, and do it very well, for a dollar a week; in
addition, they clean and sweep.... Mrs. Meek has never heard of a
divorce among the natives on the farm where she lives. The men of some
native tribes are married in church, by a negro preacher; in such a
case, they are compelled to pay two shillings for a license, but this
civilized plan is so expensive and troublesome that it is not popular.
Besides, when a man is married in church, and pays two shillings for a
license, he is liable to arrest if he marries another wife.
SATURDAY, MARCH 29.—We are at the far-famed Victoria Falls today, and
traveled here from Bulawayo at the terrific pace of fourteen miles
an hour. The conductor on the train wore a natty white suit, but did
not make up the beds, though he sold the bedding tickets; the actual
chambermaid was a very black native boy. I do not understand why
sleeping-car porters are permitted on some night trains, and not on
others.... I was in a sleeping compartment with a captain in the
English army, who is on his way to a station in the interior, seventy
miles from Victoria Falls. There, in company with another army officer,
he will rule a district, assisted by a few native police. He says
hunting is excellent where he is going, and he showed me his assortment
of guns; including one specially intended for elephants.... The
country between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls (280 miles) looks superior
to that between Mafeking and Bulawayo, but we ran into the inevitable
desert, and suffered considerably from dust. As we approached the falls
the country became rougher, and an hour before we finally left the
train we could see a cloud of mist hanging over the great cataract.
When the train stopped at Victoria Falls station—the railroad runs
four hundred miles beyond this point—we could hear the roar which will
be in our ears constantly until we leave next Wednesday at 1 P. M....
There is no town at the Falls; only a hotel, a rambling, comfortable
affair which can accommodate two hundred people. The charge is $5.25
per day each. Five miles away is the town of Livingstone, capital
of North-west Rhodesia, but it has only a handful of inhabitants.
From my room at the hotel I can see the famous railroad bridge which
spans the Zambesi river just below the falls, and passing my window
are wet and bedraggled people who have been through the Rain Forest.
In order to see the falls to best advantage, it is necessary to go
through the Rain Forest and get a ducking. Many of those who arrived
on our train at 7 o’clock this morning will return at 1 o’clock this
afternoon, thus avoiding a delay here of four days; after the train
leaves this afternoon, there will not be another train until next
Wednesday.... I doubt if anyone has ever seen, or ever will see,
all of Victoria Falls. It may only be seen in pieces, and the spray
will always hide much of the great spectacle from the most industrious
visitor; whereas Niagara may be seen in a single glance, in all its
majesty. Victoria Falls is a mile long; about twice as long as Niagara,
and four hundred feet high, whereas Niagara makes a leap of only 162
feet.... Every time I looked at Victoria Falls, there was usually
an Englishman present to inquire: “Well, what about it?” Meaning, “How
does it compare with your Niagara?” The two falls are not alike, and
cannot be compared; both are wonderful in a different way. Niagara is
situated within a few miles of Buffalo, New York, one of the largest
and busiest cities of the United States, and surrounded by a fertile
and well-settled country. Niagara is in the center of parks, hotels,
mills, street-railways, and civilization of many other varieties; an
American bride who is not taken to Niagara on her wedding trip, may
get a divorce on that ground, if the fact is presented to a court of
proper jurisdiction, but Victoria is in a wild country in the mountains
of Africa, seventeen hundred miles from Capetown, and Capetown is
nineteen days from London, and twenty-nine from New York. Niagara makes
a straight leap, whereas Victoria is more of a cataract. At Niagara,
a great solid wall of sea-green water pours over a precipice; here,
the force of the fall is broken in many places by huge rocks—at one
place the fall is separated by a wooded island, and there are many
other smaller breaks. At Niagara, the river above the fall is clean
and swift, with no rocks. At Victoria, the river above the fall is
broken into a thousand different islands; it looks like a shallow river
overflowing in brush and timber land after a torrent of rain, and much
of the water pouring over the falls is yellow and dirty.... Victoria
Falls is in shape like a huge capital T; the falls represented by the
top of the letter, and the outlet by the stem. The water pours into
a great pool a mile long, and escapes by a narrow outlet not more
than 150 feet wide in places. The water pours into the pool with a
roar that may be heard twenty-eight miles, and stirs up a spray that
causes constant rain to fall in its immediate territory. This spray is
so great that it looks like a cloud against the sky, and may be seen
before you hear the roar of the falls.... Yet the water from this
great pool escapes almost as quietly as water from an undisturbed lake.
After the water escapes from the great pool below the falls, through
the stem of the letter T, it makes a turn at right angles, and sweeps
around like the capital letter U; yet there is no great disturbance in
any part of the outlet from the falls. At Niagara, the whirlpool rapids
is one of the world’s wonders; at Victoria, the river a few hundred
feet below the falls seems to be navigable—it does not look unlike the
Waunganui river in New Zealand, down which we traveled in boats. I
believe one of the Waunganui river boats could come up the gorge below
Victoria Falls.... Every visitor, after looking at the wall of water
pouring over the falls, asks the same question: “What becomes of the
water?” Dr. Livingstone, who discovered the falls, asked the question.
I was with a party of four when I first saw the falls, and all agreed
that, in places, the river a few hundred feet below was not more than
fifty feet wide, although the guidebooks say the width is greater. And
this narrow river is not greatly disturbed a few yards below the great
Victoria Falls; there is no swirling, leaping rapids, as may be seen
four or five miles below Niagara. When looking at Victoria Falls, very
much more water seems to pour over the brink than at Niagara; when
looking at the river below, you are disposed to think the quantity is
much less—as a matter of fact, the quantity is about the same, with
Niagara a little in the lead.... At Niagara, you may see the falls
from an electric car, and go down the Niagara river on top of the
hills, and return beside the whirlpool rapids; but seeing Victoria is
much more difficult. For nearly a mile you walk in what seems a pouring
rain, but which is actually spray from the falls. Most visitors put
on old clothes at the hotel, and quietly submit to the ducking; on
their return, they take a hot bath, put on dry clothing, and sit
on the verandas, and talk about the wonderful trip. During this walk
of half a mile in pouring rain from the spray of the falls, you pass
through what is called the Rain Forest. As rain is always falling,
the vegetation is luxuriant, but not as luxuriant as I had expected.
The path through the rain forest is always wet; sometimes you step
into water over your shoe-tops, and the trees are always dripping; you
cannot see the falls to the best advantage without passing through this
Rain Forest, and you cannot make this trip without becoming as wet as
though you had plunged into a lake with your clothes on. During this
trip you frequently stand not a hundred feet from the falls, and the
spray coming up from the pool is so thick that you cannot see a hundred
feet beyond you. And all the time the great roar is in your ears, and
the rain shifting with the wind. The sun nearly always shines here,
and on this trip along the edge of the falls you may see a thousand
rainbows; I am sure I saw that many today.... The Rain Forest is
not down in the canyon, as one might imagine; it is on a level with
the top of the falls, and sometimes not a hundred feet away from it.
Imagine a street one mile long, and 400 feet below sidewalks on either
side. One sidewalk represents the Rain Forest. Opposite you is Victoria
Falls pouring into the chasm below, and causing a spray which shifts
with the wind, and not only drenches you, but hides much of your view.
The Rain Forest is simply the other side of the falls, and, to travel
its entire length, you must make a detour, and cross the narrow outlet
of the falls chasm by means of the rail road bridge.... The bridge
below the falls is the highest in the world, and in walking across
it you are 420 feet above the water in the gorge below. When it was
being built, in 1903‒5, it was frequently described in the magazines
as one of the great wonders of engineering. The bridge is of one span
only, of the cantilever type, and 610 feet in length. From the bridge,
the hotel, a half-mile away, and near the edge of the canyon, is in
plain view. The bridge-tender is a negro boy, and visitors pay him a
shilling each to cross and return.... The present is known as the
wet season, and, the Zambesi river being at a high stage, the falls
is rather more gorgeous now than it will be later on, when the river
is lower. The Zambesi is one of the great rivers of Africa, and is
referred to in a big way as we refer to the Mississippi or Missouri;
citizens here frequently refer to “the vast territory south of the
Zambesi,” as the Mississippi and Missouri rivers are dividing-lines
in the United States.... The falls were discovered by Dr. David
Livingstone in 1854, and named in honor of Queen Victoria. Livingstone
died in Africa, of the fever. He had faithful friends among his native
followers, and when they found him dead, they embalmed his body as best
they could, and carried it fifteen hundred miles to the sea, whence it
was taken to England, and buried in Westminster Abbey.... The hills
around Victoria Falls are covered with a growth of inferior timber, and
this continues until the end of the railway is reached, 400 miles to
the north.... It is estimated that nearly a million and a quarter
of visitors see Niagara every year; barely two thousand see Victoria
Falls annually, owing to its location far in the interior of Africa.
In order to reach the falls from the sea at Durban, we were compelled
to travel five days and nights by railroad train.... It is said the
fall is 420 feet. It does not seem so great, because the lower part
is hidden in the spray arising from the chasm into which the water
drops. But while you cannot appreciate the unusual fall, you can easily
appreciate that the fall is a mile wide, although broken all along the
edge by islands and huge rocks. In thinking of Victoria Falls don’t
imagine it a solid sheet of water a mile long, falling 420 feet. The
falls are broken into a thousand different streams, and some of them
strike rocks in the wall and break into spray.... I was not greatly
moved when I first saw the falls, but felt that the sight was worth
coming a long distance to see. Pictures of the falls are deceiving,
as are pictures of everything. In taking pictures of Victoria Falls,
photographers look for the fine views; the commoner aspects of the
cataract are rarely photographed. I recall a noted photograph of the
falls which is one of the most majestic things I have ever seen in
pictures; but in order to take it, the photographer was compelled
to climb down a cliff by means of ropes; so the picture is really
unnatural.... There are thirty or forty guests at this hotel, and
I have talked with most of them. They all seem to be well satisfied
with the trip, but none of them rave about the falls as do the writers
in the guidebooks.... No one seems to know the depth of water in
the narrow gorge through which the water from the falls is discharged;
soundings of 150 feet have been made without touching bottom.
[Illustration: Rhodes Memorial, Kimberley
Rhodes’ Grave
Victoria Falls Bridge
Naval Station, Pago Pago
Rhodes Statue, Bulawayo]