Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/337

 strikes at a moth miller when around home. I never knew a man so dignified that he wouldn't take a smash at a moth miller The Bulawayo newspaper, issued this morning, tells of the depredations of lions in the surrounding country. Several cattle and one native were killed. Let American country editors think of exciting country correspondence of that kind.

—Thirty miles from Bulawayo is a district known as the Matopo Hills, one hundred miles long by twenty-five broad. During the Matabele rebellion of 1896-7, these rough hills of granite proved impregnable when occupied by the natives, as they are full of passes and gigantic caves, and occasional fertile but almost inaccessible valleys. Cecil Rhodes loved this district, because of its wildness, and one of his last requests was that his body be buried on top of the highest of the Matopo Hills. We visited his grave today, during the course of an automobile ride. There is no monument over his grave; a simple flat stone covers it. Two hundred feet away, and on top of the same hill, is a monument "In Memory of Brave Men." It is a huge affair of granite, in memory of Major Allan Wilson and his party, who fell on the Shangaui river in 1893. It is a common habit of discreet men to erect handsome monuments over the graves of foolhardy adventurers, and call them brave. Thousands of men lost their lives in order that Cecil Rhodes might become noted, and be the subject of statues at Kimberley, Johannesburg, Bulawayo, etc. Other noted men have