submission of soldiers to their general, while
the less martial tribes, such as the Bechuanas and Basutos, obey the
chief only when he has the sentiment of the tribe behind him. One thing,
however, the king could not do. He owned a large part of all the cattle
of the tribe, and he assumed the power to grant concessions to dig for
minerals. But the land belonged to the whole tribe by right of conquest,
and he had no power to alienate it.

Moved by the associations of the ancient capital, Mr. Rhodes directed
the residence of the Administrator, Government House, as it is called,
to be built on the site of Lo Bengula's kraal. But the spot was not a
convenient one for the creation of a European town, for it was a good
way from any stream, and there was believed to be a valuable gold-reef
immediately under it. Accordingly, a new site was chosen, on somewhat
lower ground, about two miles to the south-west. Here new Bulawayo
stands, having risen with a rapidity rivalling that of a mining-camp in
Western America. The site has no natural beauty, for the landscape is
dull, with nothing to relieve its monotonous lines except the hill of
Tsaba Induna, about fifteen miles distant to the east. The ground on
which the town stands, sloping gently to the south, is bare, dusty, and
wind-swept, like the country all round. However, the gum-trees, planted
in the beginning of 1894, when the streets were laid out, had already
shot up to twelve or fifteen feet in height and began to give some
little shade. Brick houses were rising here and there among the wooden
shanties and the sheds of corrugated iron. An opera house was talked of,
and already the cricket-ground and racecourse, without which Englishmen
cannot be happy, had been laid out. Town lots, or "stands," as they are
called in South Africa, had gone up to prices which nothing but a career
of swift and brilliant prosperity could justify. However, that
prosperity seemed to the inhabitants of Bulawayo to be assured. Settlers
kept flocking in. Storekeepers and hotel-keepers were doing a roaring
trade. Samples of ore were every day being brought in from newly
explored gold-reefs, and all men's talk was of pennyweights, or even
ounces, to the ton. Everybody was cheerful, because everybody was
hopeful. It was not surprising. There is something intoxicating in the
atmosphere of a perfectly new country, with its undeveloped and
undefined possibilities: and the easy acquisition of this spacious a