Condition: Good. DJ is good apart from some handling marks. Book is clean and tight.
Format: Hardcover with DJ
Published: 1969 (Books of Africa)
Pages: 301
ISBN: So quickly did land transport in Rhodesia developthe railway reached Matabeleland seven years after the Occupation of 1890 that the era of the ox-wagon and the transport-rider tends to be forgotten. This is to be regretted for the pioneers of the road, if this description can be applied to those who cut wheel ruts through the bush, made a major contribution to the opening-up and early development of the country. It was the trek-ox that hauled the first mining machinery to the back of beyond, that brought the supplies which sustained the early settlers, and that made it possible for Commerce to extend its reach to the most distant and hitherto inaccessible points.
Prior to the arrival of the railway at Bulawayo, wagons plied between the railhead at Mafeking and Lobengulas former capital, taking two months to complete the 525-mile journey. A wagon carried up to 8,000 lb. In 1895, the Bulawayo Chamber of Commerce reported that upwards of 2,000 wagons had come into Bulawayo in a twelve-month period. During the same time, a passenger in a Zeederberg coach counted over 100 wagons along the 205 miles of road between Palapye and Bulawayo.
It is against this background that Hyatt tells his story of transport-riding and trading in the south-east of Rhodesia before the turn of the century. He presents a fascinating picture of a period that has passed for ever, yet which is not many decades away. Hardships are part of the daily round; financial ruin his reward for some ten years of unremitting toil. His descriptions of Gwelo, Fort Victoria and Bulawayo, as he knew them, are far from flattering; neither does he have a kind word for the bleak highveld which seems, to him, to stretch endlessly to Gwelo.
His recollections are mainly of clogging mud and of loaded wagons bogged in mud-holes. Here, too, he spent a memorably cheerless Christmas. He refers to the marketing of the first Rhodesian-grown tobaco but is generally unimpressed by the achievements of the early farmers; in fact, he is most pessimistic in his assessment of the agricultural and economic potential of Rhodesia.
