THE ADVANCE ON BULUWAYO. ht-1 ;2d on farms and mineswas obtained by employing theMashonas,the vassals ofthe warlikeMatabele. Lobengula still held his savage court at Buluand perhaps had not the wish, to check his fighting chiefs and young warriors,and put an end to the raids once and for all. A plan of campaign had been drawn up, the leading idea of which was that several small columns of mountedriflemen, withmachine guns and some field pieces, were to converge upon Buluwayo, the Matabele capital. Each column would be accompanied by a number of ox waggons carrying supplies andreserve ammunition, and when halted for the night, tlae waggons, with the help of a hastily constructed thorn fence, could be used to form a fortified laager, which, manned by good rifle shots, with thehelp of the Maxim guns, could easily defy tlae rush of savage spearmen.

wayo, in the western part of the country, and thus two governments,acting on widelydifferent principles, existed side by side in the same region. A conflict sooner or later was inevitable. How it actually arose is still a subject of controversy between the partisans and the opponents of the Chartered Company. But the factseems tobethat the youngMatabele warriors persisted in raiding upon the Mashonas in the employ of the settlers, and the outbreakof hostilitieswassimply the result of oneof theseraids. Matters came to a climax on Sunday, July oth, 1803, when a Matabeleimpi, or war party, killed several Mashona labourers close to the town of Victoria. Dr. Jameson, who was then administrator of the Company's territory in Mashonaland and Matabeleland, hurried to Victoria and held a conference with the Matabele chiefs, whosewarriors wereencampedin the neighbourhood. .After a parley, in which they took a defiant tone,he told them that if they did not march away their force in an hour he would sand the mounted police to attack them. A part of the impi began to retreat, but 300 or It was expected, and indeed hoped, that the Matabele would attack the laagers. They were supposed to be able to muster about 15,000 sighting men,but only about half of them had rifles of any kind, and even they had no idea of how to makeaneffective use of them. The Matabele rifleman usually put up his sights as high as possibleunder the impression that this made therifle " shootstronger," an idea derived from seeing white men put the sight up when aiming at a distantobject. The result was that the Matabelefire was alwayshigh and comparatively harmless. Many of the warriors were armed only with native weapons,thespear, the club, and the hide-covered shield. A small European force coulddefeat thousands equipped in this primitive fashion, for steady rifle fire rj prevent the enemy from ever getting to close quarter-.

400 remained in position, and when the time was up, a party of about forty horsemen was sent out under Captain Lendy, R.A., who fired on and dispersed them.

Efforts werenowmade, both by Dr. Jameson and the High Commissioner of South Air induce Lobengula to disavow the conduct oJ his chiefs in camping near Victoria and killing the Mashonas, and to punish those who were responsible. At first he seemed inclined to yield, but he ended by refu-ing to comply with the demands of the Colonial Government and the Company, and the High Commissioner finally authoriscd Dr. Jameson toemploy theCompany's forcesin a march on Buluwayo, to break up the military power of the Matabele. The incident whichled to the actual rupture was an attack on a patrol of the Bechuanaland Border Police,by the Matabele, on October ;th. The Border Police, an Imperial force, were ordered to cross the frontier under the command of L i Adams,and co-operatewith the Chartered Company's forces under Maj< r Forbes and Dr. Jameson.

e had been for some time in pro es ol organisationfor active service, for early in the negotiationswith Lobengula it had been recognised that the Matabele king hid not thepower, The total force employed in the advance on Buluwayo consisted of about 1,100 whites and 600 natives, these latter being employed as servant-, waggoners,and scouts. Two columns advanced from the eastward, the Salisbury or Fort Charter column, underMajor P. W. Forbes, which numbered 25S whiteVolunteers and 115 natives ; arid the Vii toria column under Major Allan Wilson, made up of 441 whites and 440 natives. The Victoria column was accompanied by Dr.Jameson andSir John Willoughby. The two columns united at Iron"Mine Hill beforecoming incontact withanything but smallparties of the enemy.Major Forbes taking commandof the combined force. The columns advancing from the south were the Tuli column under ander Raaff, numbering 225 whiteVolunt, ,,ho wen joined on the way up by a contingent of nativesunder Khama, the chiefof the Bamangwatos; and the Imperial forces