“Nelson showed me, when we were out together in the veldt the day before yesterday, some remains of Mashona huts destroyed by the Matabele. He says they are to be found all over the veldt, and bones amongst many of them. Some of the Mashonas are subject to the Matabele. Those that refuse allegiance are mercilessly hunted down. They are all formed of independent little tribes, and when war is made against one the others don’t assist them. Therefore they fall an easy prey. The impeys sent out against them for their cattle are what I heard of at Gubuleweyo. Nelson says lately in an impey a kraal was taken, the young men killed (they throw away their scanty dress and run and are killed ‘like springbok’), and the old men and women burnt to death. The young women and children were made slaves of, and the cattle taken. Nelson’s Matabele boys wanted him lately to drive off some cattle, saying the king might give him fifty of them, but he refused. The cattle and all the animals are kept in the same place as the Mashonas themselves live in (the same house, Nelson calls it). They are thus easily surrounded by the Matabele. The Matabele despise those who own allegiance to their chief, and call them slaves. One of the latter in Nelson’s employ blew his face off with some gunpowder, doing something for his master on one occasion. ‘Never mind,’ said Nelson’s Matabele, ‘it is nothing, he is a dog’ (the usual epithet). The man’s father came to Nelson and asked to be paid, and was quite satisfied with a few coils of brass wire. Once, when Nelson killed a rhinoceros, a number of Mashona came for the meat and began fighting. They would cry, ‘This is mine,’ ‘This is mine,’ and two were killed. Nelson went away, feeling, he says, quite frightened at the scene. An assegai was thrust into one man’s heart by another who was quarrelling with him before Nelson’s eyes. “In Damaraland, he says, the Bushmen are much better to get on with than the Matabele are here. They work for you like slaves for a little meat. They are under independent petty chiefs, and bring magnificent ostrich feathers for a small strip of limbo or other very trifling payment. From what Nelson says, it must be a capital place for the hunter, ivory being large, white, and plentiful, and easily got, and the natives most willing to assist.