Rhodesia

“ In this far Rhodesia, how strange that she, the product of the most modern and presumably enlightened age, should linger there amidst these broken walls, and feel strange kinship and fascination about those old people in that remote age; should stretch a hand out to them, as it were, across the centuries, with this feeling that their thoughts had been even as her thoughts, and that the passing of the ages could never eradicate the essential likeness of one people to another in those old eternal questions of whence and why and wherefore. ”

“ There had been so much "Rhodesia" of late. Everyone seemed bitten with a kind of silly craze for the place. Now it was gold; now it was land; now it was union or no union; now it was annexation and "twenty pieces of silver"; such a lot of fuss about some square miles of wilderness, containing odd outcrops of gold-bearing reef.
"There is nothing worth seeing in Rhodesia, except the Victoria Falls," he asserted; "and you can run up there and see all you want to and get back in a week!" And still he looked enquiringly at Meryl.
"We want to see the people," she said, half turning. ”

“ And she faced him with that smouldering indignation she rarely allowed to come to the surface.
"But they are both in Rhodesia"—ignoring her kindly inclusion of himself and his brother—"and Rhodesia wants good men."
"And when she gets them just buries them at her outposts. I haven't much faith in your Rhodesia. She is a capricious jade. She absorbs a man's finest qualities and best years and gives him nothing in return."
"Ask Carew if she gives him nothing. Probably she has given him more than anyone else could give."
She got up impatiently. "All the more reason why he shouldn't be such a bear. ”

“ But Rhodesia remains a thriving part of the British Empire and the dream of the founder is realized.
[Pg 122] III
Rhodesia produces much more than trouble for the Chartered Company. She is pre-eminently a land of ranches and farms. Here you get still another parallel with the United States because it is no uncommon thing to find a farm of 50,000 acres or more.
I doubt if any other new region in the world contains a finer or sturdier manhood than Rhodesia. Like the land itself it is a stronghold of youth. ”

“ Rhodesia is a trap in which many poor men get caught. The riches of the country are much advertised in England, and those who come out and buy land soon find that their limited means are gone, and they are practically stranded. Both Rhodesia and South Africa are countries only for men with capital.
The railway branches in two directions from Bulawayo—one easterly to Salisbury and out to Beira, Portuguese East Africa, the latter place being the port for Rhodesia; and northwesterly to Victoria Falls, and from that point 300 miles northward toward the southern border of the Congo Free State. ”

“ The populating of Rhodesia by mixed races of whites of a superior order to any near it must exercise the Portuguese, whose territory lies between Rhodesia and the Indian Ocean. The iron road leading to it cannot be closed. The future of the country is no longer doubtful. We have tested its climate ourselves; we have heard the general conviction that these lofty plains, 4500 feet above the sea, suit the constitution of the white race ”

“ You must show that Rhodesia is better than Australia, where you have the fringes of the coast and the best parts of the interior already taken up. You have only to go to Melbourne, Sydney, and other large Australian towns, to find that they have a very large population who do not know what to do with themselves or where to go, who would be valuable to a new country like Rhodesia. ”

“ Just as every visitor to the United States heads straight for Niagara, so every visitor to South Africa purchases forthwith a ticket to the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi, the mighty cataract in the heart of Rhodesia which is the greatest natural wonder in the Dark Continent and, perhaps, in the world. ”

“ If the Government of Rhodesia neglect this, the Boers will go on filtering through the Transvaal to Rhodesia, and the same mistakes will recur that have been made in the Cape Colony and the Transvaal, where the settled population is Dutch and the moving English.”
Australians Available.
“What are the principal countries outside South Africa from which such settlers could be drawn?”
“There are plenty of people in Australia, for instance, who would be very glad of the opportunity to settle in nice places in Rhodesia if they were tempted to do so. ”

“ Rhodesia is for the most part well watered and fertile, and having come into the hands of the Chartered Company practically unoccupied, the objection noted in the other four Colonies, of the previous occupation of the pick of the land, is here non-existent. Large blocks of country, in fact, actually await and cry out for settlement. ”

“ So they reached the summit, and stood a moment gazing at the prospect outspread. A sunset in a novel has become too banal for repetition; it seems, indeed, almost the last word in literary mediocrity; and yet at the evening hour in Rhodesia, in September, when the rains are nearly due, and great masses of cloud begin to gather on the horizon, there is again and again a pageant of wonder and colouring to steep man's senses afresh at every renewal, as if it was the first time of beholding. ”

“ Under the Charter the Company was given administrative control of an area larger than that of Great Britain, France and Prussia. It divided up into Northern and Southern Rhodesia with the Zambesi River as the separating line. Northern Rhodesia remains a sparsely settled country—there are only 2,000 white inhabitants to 850,000 natives—and the only industry of importance is the lead and zinc development at Broken Hill. ”

“ Other specialized crops, on which there is not here space to dilate, offer equally favourable returns, and there is little doubt that for the Englishman of small capital, unable to prosper in the crowded Homeland, yet properly unwilling to go out from the British family, Rhodesia offers very exceptional opportunities in these directions. ”

“ Though Rhodesia is distinctly a frontier country, with many of a frontier's defects, her towns—Salisbury, Bulawayo, Umtali, and the rest—are not frontier towns as we knew them in Butte, Cheyenne, Deadwood, and Carson City. There are saloons, of course, but they [Pg 215] are not of the “gin palace” variety, nor did it strike me that intoxication was particularly common; certainly nothing like what it used to be during the gold-rush days in Alaska or in our own West. ”

“ In Northern Rhodesia the white in 1911 numbered about 1,500, and in May 1921 3,585, of whom 2,223 were males and 1,326 females. A considerable proportion of the white residents are officials and missionaries and their families. The native pop. in 1920 was estimated at 928,000.
Communication.—Little was done during 1910–21 to extend communication in Rhodesia itself, but from Sakania on the Rhodesian-Belgian Congo frontier the railway was continued through Katanga with the result that the valuable mineral output of that region was carried over the Rhodesian lines. ”

“ In Rhodesia to-day, however, you have a country, to which such people would be very advantageous. Cape Colony has an enormous area that requires to be populated, and so has Natal. How are you to reach the class of people required for this? What are you to offer them? It must be something better than where they are now.”
“In your opinion Rhodesia is well adapted for cattle raising?”
“Yes; the Matabele found it so, and there are still many cattle there despite the rinderpest. New cattle will do well enough, I think, if you take them rapidly by railway across the malarial belt.” ”

“ Naturally, too, the bold adventurers of Rhodesia, arrogant in their success and as little scrupulous as "empire-builders" are apt to be, looked with contempt and impatience at the plodding Boer, as an obstacle to their booming development in Africa of a civilization "up to date." ”

“ Northern Rhodesia has no part in the fight against the Charter. It is only a question of time, however, when she will be merged into Southern Rhodesia for, with the passing of the Company, her destiny becomes identical with that of her sister territory. Northern Rhodesia's chief complaint against the Company was that it did not spend any money within her borders. ”

“ Northern Rhodesia.—The amalgamation of North-Eastern and North-Western Rhodesia was carried into effect on Aug. 17 1911, when Mr. (afterwards Sir) Lawrence Wallace was appointed administrator, a post he held for nearly ten years. [5] The defence of the territory, which had been shared with Nyasaland, had been taken over entirely by the Rhodesian authorities a short time before the amalgamation was carried through. The number of British settlers gradually increased and missionaries did valuable work in training the natives and introducing higher standards among them. ”

“ Presently it stamped his name on the broad empire which bore already the stamp of his personality and will, by proclaiming (May 1, 1895) : "The territories now or hereafter placed under the control of the British South Africa Company shall be named collectively Rhodesia. The provinces at the present time included in the territory of Rhodesia are Mashonaland, Matabeleland, and Northern Zambesia." Great ambitions—imperial ambitions—had thus come to be powerfully embodied in a corporation which practically served the will of one remarkably able man. ”

“ Get him to talk to you about the natives; about their habits and legends and customs. There isn't a man in Rhodesia knows more, and there isn't one they trust more absolutely. He is down in this district now on their behalf, and before he set foot here they knew all about him. Natives a hundred miles apart communicate that sort of thing to each other. Every kraal here knew perfectly that he was stern and rigid, but absolutely just. If he once says a thing he stands by it, even if he gets into trouble at headquarters, which isn't so very unusual. ”

“ That in the belief that procrastination and delay strike at and injure the very life of the nation, the Government of Rhodesia consider it essential that Rhodesia should attain, without delay, sovereign independence, the justice of which is beyond question ”

“ Then Meryl spoke:
"Why can't we go back with you to South Africa, father?"
"Because I'm going to take a trip north. I'm going up to Rhodesia about some mining claims."
"And couldn't we go there with you?"
"Not very well. I'm not going to the towns, except for a day or two. I shall have to do a lot of trekking in the wild, outlying parts. You couldn't manage that."
"Of course not," murmured Aunt Emily. "How dreadful that you should have to go, Henry! Why, there are lions and elephants and things, and the natives are savages; surely no mines are worth running such risks?" ”

“ He smiled a little grimly. "We are so apt to expect the impossible," he finished. "How should numbers of men of fine fibre ever reach Rhodesia at all? In so many cases we must just take what we can get."
"But the standard will improve as the country grows?"
"O yes; it is improving steadily. All the signs are hopeful, if we can but light upon what is truly the best method of administering the native laws, and get good men to carry the work out."
And still the heavenly sense of unrestrained mental kinship lingered. Happy, yet fearful, Meryl ventured a word of appreciation. ”

“ The Outer Lands are almost all exploited; the work of the pioneer and the frontiersman is nearly finished, and in another decade or so we shall see their like no [Pg 222] more. Rhodesia is the last of the great new countries open to colonisation under Anglo-Saxon ideals of government and climatically suitable for the propagation of the Anglo-Saxon race. Though the handful of hardy settlers who have already made it their home speak with the burr of the shires instead of the drawl of the plains ”

“ The Rhodes impress is everywhere. Now I had arrived at the cap-stone of it all, the domain that bears his name and which he added to the British Empire.
Less than two hours after the immigration inspector had given me the once-over on the frontier I was in Bulawayo, metropolis of Rhodesia, which sprawls over the veldt just like a bustling Kansas community spreads out over the prairie. It is definitely American in energy and atmosphere. Save for the near-naked blacks you could almost imagine yourself in Idaho or Montana back in the days when our West was young. ”

“ The peaceful loveliness soothed his spirit because he loved it, but in her it awakened a vague, swift ache. She felt somehow that he had a right to love the country, because he had made it his and given it of his best; that, for all his presumable poverty in many things, he was yet so rich in what he had achieved, and in what he had won for himself of interest and usefulness. While for her?... She was an alien, a mere tourist, a looker-on; the daughter of a millionaire who came to Rhodesia for wealth, and gave—how little in return! ”

“ While being instructed in the hopes and ambitions of several of the local people, my knowledge of how other young countries, such as the States, Canada, Australia, had been affected by the extension of the railway into parts as thinly inhabited as Rhodesia, induced me to cast my glance far beyond Rhodesia, that I might see what was likely to be its destiny, whether it was to be a Free State like Orange, self-sufficient and complacent within its own limits, or broadly ambitious like Illinois State, of which Chicago is the heart. ”

“ Throughout the campaign the Chartered Company remained neutral, although it was obviously opposed to Responsible Government. The feeling throughout Rhodesia is that it favors Union because it could dispose of its assets to better advantage.
I arrived in Rhodesia immediately after the election. The country still sizzled with excitement. Curiously enough, the head, brains and front of the fight for union with South Africa was a former American, now a British subject and who has been a ranchman in Rhodesia for some years. He prefers to be nameless. ”