SUNSHINE AND STORM IN RHODESIA

xxix + 290mm + fold-out map + 10pp Publisher's ads (unspliced pages). Brown buckram with title and faded pictorial decoration on the spine, title embossed on the cover. Rowland Ward's usual zebra-print endpapers. 17 illustrations and a folding map at the rear.

Previous owner's name is penned to the pre-title page. Light wear to cover extremities. Light foxing to prelims only, otherwise internally clean and tightly bound throughout. No splitting to end-papers, etc. As such a very good copy.

An exciting account of the Matabele campaign of 1896 by a master writer of African exploration literature.

F.C. Selous was already a well-known writer, explorer, and hunter when he published this work about his experiences before and during the 1896 British campaign against the rebellions of the war-like Matabele tribe in Rhodesia. The members of the Matabele tribe were chafing beneath the British conquest of three years before, and initiated their rebellion with the murder of a number of white settlers. Bulawayo (the largest town in the Western provinces) was threatened, and this put the rest of the country south of the Zambesi into a state of rebellion as the fervor rose. Very fierce fighting between the British and the natives shortly followed, but Rhodes hastened to propose peace talks, and the army shortly went unarmed into the heart of the Matappo hills to meet with native representatives. The interview involved great personal risk for the emissaries, and depended for its success entirely upon Rhodes' personality and influence over the native races, but luckily it was successful and terminated what promised to be a long and disastrous native war. When the rebellion broke out, the author and his wife were newly settled on an estate in the Matabeleland. Selous served as an officer in the Bulawayo Field Force, and presents here some account of every skirmish which had taken place between the Colonists and the natives in Matabeleland up to the date of the above-mentioned Force. "To this I add a short account of my personal experiences in the country during the months immediately preceding the outbreak of the insurrection."

'After the close of the Matabele War, Mr. Selous returned to England, but in 1895 was offered an appointment in Matabeleland, and proceeding to Rhodesia, took up the management of the Essexvale Estate in the neighbourhood of Bulawayo. He was busied in the organisation of the property till March 1896, when the rebellion of the natives broke out, and he assumed the command of the H troop of the Bulawayo Field Force, which he retained till the conclusion of hostilities.

The author was of opinion that the removal of the police force from Matabeleland to the Transvaal (Jameson Raid), " gave the natives their opportunity to revolt," but he asserts that the leaders of the insurrection had long determined on rising whenever the circumstances were favourable to the movement. The causes of the discontent amongst the natives were, the exaction of " a certain amount of paid labour from every able-bodied man," the confiscation of cattle, and the endeavour on the part of the Matabeles to free themselves from the restraints of a settled form of government. In addition to a full account of the rebellion, there is a supplementary chapter recording some of the author's views on the Anglo-Boer question, in which he states that " a war between the Boers and British can only be a calamity of incalculable dimensions to both races."' Mendelssohn (Sidney) South African Bibliography