[The Story of Baden-Powell by Harold Begbie]@TWC D-Link bookThe Story of Baden-Powell CHAPTER X 7/25
Rinderpest was slaying the cattle of the Matabele by thousands, and the white man's order that, to prevent the scourge from spreading, healthy beasts as well as diseased should be killed was, not unnaturally, quite unintelligible to the Matabele.
The rumour spread that the hated white man was killing the cattle in order that the tribes should perish of starvation.
The fact, too, that raiding weaker tribes for food was punished by the British further aggravated this "offence." The priests encouraged the spirit of rebellion, and the oracle-deity, the M'limo, promised through the priests that if the Matabele would make war upon the white man his bullets in their flight should be changed to water, and his cannon shells become eggs.
Horrible murders followed upon this encouragement, too horrible, indeed, to repeat; but a general idea of the blood-lust which now possessed the Matabele may be gathered from the fact of over a hundred and fifty English people (scattered, of course, in outlying districts) being killed within a week of the M'limo's call to battle.
Only a swift blow, then, could prevent the loss of civilisation to South Africa for many years; only a terrible lesson could teach the Matabele that the white man was his lord and master. Buluwayo, prior to the time of Sir Frederick Carrington's arrival, contained about seven hundred women and children and some eight hundred men.
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