Lo Ben’s Kraal.

At the north end of the town we come to a gate leading to an avenue which ran perfectly straight for two miles and a half. The carriage road, which it is intended to macadamise, is about 30 feet wide, and running parallel with it on either side is an enclosure 50 feet wide, to be planted with shade trees. Thus the avenue embraces a width of about 130 feet. At the extremity of it is the Government House, standing in grounds which four years ago were occupied by Lo Bengula’s kraal. We were all curious to see the place, and one of the first objects shown to us was the small tree under which the Matabele king dispensed his bloody judgments.

Here is a description of the place from “Zambesia”: “The King’s capital stands upon a ridge on the northern side of the Bulawayo River, in a most commanding position, overlooking as it does the entire country round. Every yard of the ground was covered with dung, layer after layer; the whole place was filthily dirty. The King used to sit on a block of wood in the middle of a great pole stockade, surrounded by sheep and goats.”

The first sentence is most misleading, though not inaccurate. The kraal stood upon the same level as the plain of New Bulawayo, but the “Bulawayo River”—a dry watercourse most of the year—has scoured out a broad hollow to a depth of about 20 feet in the plain, and, as the kraal was seated on the brow above it, it enables one to have a view of a circle of about fifteen miles in diameter, within which are probably three or four of these long, broad swells of plain land.

Government House is a long, low, white-washed house, in Dutch Colonial style, with a pillared verandah outside. It is the property of Mr Rhodes, as well as the avenue just mentioned. I am told he possesses about eighty square miles altogether hereabouts, and, by the way he is developing his estates, it will some day be a beautiful as well as valuable property.