THE WILD NATIVES OF MASHONALAND.
IN Mashonaland there are, besides large numbers of natives who are brought into contact with the whites, tribes of wild natives. The bishop of Mashonaland, in Mission Fields for June, tells of an interview with a powerful chief of an ancient race:— “I had an interesting but sad visit to the perfectly savage chief M'tasa, where we have begun a small work. He had been drinking, and was in a morose and sullen mood. He said the teacher was his friend, but why did the white man take his country and his cattle and his women? I told him that I had nothing to do with the government, and I had to pay taxes, and obey the queen's laws, as well as himself, and that the laws were for his protection as well as mine. “I then rebuked him for allowing white men to bring whisky amongst his people, and warned him that the great Spirit would take the kingdom away from him unless he protected his people from evil and governed righteously. He said we might teach his people, and the missionary was his friend. M'tasa is the paramount chief in this district, and represents the old dynasty of the Monomotopo, dating from 1000 B.C. at least, but how degenerated by their native worship, their Baal and Astarte, their Chiun and star-gods, their Moloch and five demons, their divinations and their sorceries, their animal and material worship, and their degradation of all national, social, and the individual life by the triple tyranny of slavery, polygamy, and witchcraft!”