Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South AfricaAnderson, Andrew A.
History
Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa
Anderson, Andrew A.
Africa, Southern -- Description and travel; Anderson, Andrew A. -- Travel -- Africa, Southern
Kaffir corn is the principal food of the people. The women cultivate
the land and bring water to their houses, so that there is a constant
stream of them with their Kaffir pots going up and down the hill on all
sides, conveying it to their houses. Most of the women have little
black babies on their backs, supported by well-worn skins of the wild
animals killed by the men; with little naked urchins running by their
mother's side, hanging on to the skin worn similar to a kilt, happy as
they can be, talking to their neighbours as they meet, singing with all
the lightness of a happy heart. They continue to suck until five or six
years old.
When we compare their habits with civilised life, there is very little
difference. They have the same routine of duty to go through daily in
their household affairs, so far as cooking, keeping their huts in order,
attending to their gardens and such things. The men make the karosses
and attend to their cattle. The Matabele race live precisely in the
same way, and have the same habits as their neighbours, the Bechuanas.
The king has several country kraals, which he visits at different times
for a change.
The country cannot boast of many good roads; there is only one direct
from the south. Others from Mongwato go round to the west by the great
salt-pan Makarakara. There are also two from the Tati district, and two
from Gubuluwayo, and other hunting roads from Inyatine to the Zambese,
Victoria Falls, and military kraals in various parts of the territory,
many of them very good, others stony and with bad drifts.
Inyatine during the lifetime of Moselikatze was an extensive military
station. After his death it was destroyed, and the king removed south,
and eventually settled at Gubuluwayo; but it appears that lately he has
abandoned that station, and fixed his residence in another locality.
The road from the king's kraal to Sebenane station, where several roads
branch off, one going to Panda-ma-Tenka, Mr. G. Westbeech's large
store, passes through a sandy country with numerous pans and vleis, dry
in winter, but containing water in summer. In the Lechuma valley
beyond, Wankies, a chief, a few years ago, had possession of the country
until Lo-Bengulu took it from him, and Wankies and his people crossed
the Zambese and settled on its northern bank.
The Victoria Falls are considered to be included in the Matabele
kingdom. Although this part of the country is 3000 feet above
sea-level, it is very unhealthy during the summer months. Mr. G.
Westbeech, who has lived and hunted in the country for the last thirteen
years, told me in 1878 he had had the fever over thirty times, and when
he took quinine the dose would be a small teaspoonful. The country
generally through this part is very pretty, in many portions park-like,
with clumps of trees in groups; but the roads are fearfully sandy, and
the want of water for some six and seven months of the year is a great
drawback to the country improving.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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