Crossing a stream below the fort, we found ourselves amidst a collection of circular daub huts and stores, on either side of what a facetious butcher, who dealt largely in tough old transport oxen, had termed in his advertisement ‘Main Street.’ Here you might pay enormous prices for the barest necessities of life, and drink at old Angus’s bar a glass of whisky at the same price you could get a bottle for in England. Scotch is the prevailing accent here, and I think the greatest gainers out of Mashonaland, in the first year of its existence, were those canny traders who loaded waggons with jams and drink, and sold them at fabulous prices to hungry troopers and thirsty prospectors. Old Angus was a typical specimen of this class, a sandy-haired little Scotchman, well up in colonial ways, who kept two huts, in one of which eating, drinking, and gossip were always to be found; whilst the other was divided into three bare cells, and called an hotel. Such was the first Umtali, primitive and fascinating in its rawness. Now these huts are abandoned to the rats and the rain, and a new Umtali of doubtful expansion has been built five miles away. Our journey from Umtali to Beira was one which required much forethought. First, we had much luggage, which we did not wish to leave behind or bury on the way, as others had been obliged to do; secondly, my wife did not feel inclined to do the one hundred and eighty miles on foot, through heat and swamp, in tropical Africa; and thirdly, the Kaffir bearers were scarce, and especially—at that season of the year, when their fields wanted ploughing—apt to run away at awkward moments. So the services of the homely ass were brought into requisition. The ass would die of the fly-bite, everyone told us, but not until it had deposited us safely in Beira. Consequently our eleven asses were retained in our service and considered in the light of the railway tickets of the future, to be used and thrown away. It seemed horribly cruel, I must admit, to condemn eleven asses to certain death; but then, what are animals made for but to lay down their lives to satisfy the requirements of man in his dire emergencies?