pe boy." None of
us was armed, and no one of the friends we consulted as to our trip even
suggested that I should carry so much as a revolver, or that the
slightest risk was involved in taking a lady through the country. How
absolutely secure the Administrator at Bulawayo felt was shown by his
sending the Matabililand mounted police (those who afterwards marched
into the Transvaal) to Pitsani, in southern Bechuanaland, in November,
leaving the country denuded of any force to keep order.

It is easy to be wise after the event. The confidence of the Europeans
in the submissiveness of the natives is now seen to have been ill
founded. Causes of discontent were rife among them, which, at first
obscure, became subsequently clear. Two of these causes were already
known at the time of my visit, though their seriousness was
under-estimated. In Mashonaland the natives disliked the tax of ten
shillings for each hut, which there, as in the Transvaal Republic,[48]
they have been required to pay; and they complained that it was apt to
fall heavily on the industrious Kafir, because the idle one escaped,
having nothing that could be taken in payment of it. This tax was
sometimes levied in kind, sometimes in labour, but by preference in
money when the hut-owner had any money, for the Company desired to
induce the natives to earn wages. If he had not, an ox was usually taken
in pledge. In Matabililand many natives, I was told, felt aggrieved that
the Company had claimed the ownership of and the right to take to itself
all the cattle, as having been (in the Company's view) the property of
Lo Bengula, although many of these had, in fact, been left in the hands
of the indunas, and a large part were, in December, 1895, distributed
among the natives as their own property. Subsequent inquiries have shown
that this grievance was deeply and widely felt. As regards the land,
there was evidently the material out of which a grievance might grow,
but the grievance did not seem to have yet actually arisen. The land was
being sold off in farms, and natives squatting on a piece of land so
sold might be required by the purchaser to clear out. However, pains
were taken, I was told, to avoid including native villages in any farm
sold. Often it would not be for the purchaser's interest to eject the
natives, because he might get labourers among them, and labour is what
is most wanted. Two native reservations had been laid out, but the
policy of the Company