404

_The Spaniards destroy the idol at Pachacamac_ 407

_WILSON'S LAST FIGHT_

'They were men whose fathers were men'

TO make it clear how Major Wilson and his companions came to die on the
banks of the Shangani on December 4, 1893, it will be necessary, very
briefly, to sketch the events which led to the war between the English
settlers in Mashonaland in South Africa and the Matabele tribe, an
offshoot of the Zulu race.

In October 1889, at the instance of Mr. Cecil Rhodes and others
interested, the Chartered Company of British South Africa was
incorporated, with the sanction of Her Majesty's Government.

In 1890 Mashonaland was occupied, a vast and fertile territory nominally
under the rule of Lobengula, king of the Matabele, which had been ceded
by him to the representatives of the Company in return for certain
valuable considerations. It is, however, an easier task for savage kings
to sign concessions than to ensure that such concessions will be
respected by their subjects, especially when those 'Subjects' are
warriors by nature, tradition, and practice, as in the present case, and
organised into regiments, kept from year to year in perfect efficiency
and readiness for attack. Whatever may have been Lobengula's private
wishes and opinions, it soon became evident that the gathering of the
white men upon their borders, and in a country which they claimed by
right of conquest if they did not occupy it, was most distasteful to the
more warlike sections of the Matabele.

Mashonaland takes its name from the Mashona tribes who inhabit it, a
peaceful and, speaking by comparison, an industrious race, whom, ever
since they first settled in the neighbourhood, it had been the custom of
the subjects of Lobengula and of his predecessor, Mosilikatze, 'the
lion,' to attack with every cruelty conceivable, raiding their cattle,
slaughtering their men, and sweeping their maidens and young children
into captivity. Terrified, half exterminated indeed, as they were by
these constant and unprovoked onslaughts, the Mashonas welcomed with
delight the occupation of their country by white men, and thankfully
placed themselves under the protection of the Chartered Company.

The Matabele regiments, however, took a different view of the question,
for now their favourite sport was gone: they could no longer practise
rapine and murder, at least in this direction, whenever the spirit moved
them. Presently