1891. ] Matabeleland.—Facts and Figures. 21 
Mashonaland Plateau. Mr. Frank Mandy, a friend of my own, who 
has lived twenty years in Matabeleland, and who has had ample 
opportunities of judging of climate and other surroundings, would 
speak in the same terms as | have done in this paper.” 
I must mention that Mr. Surridge was Chaplain to the Pioneer 
Force and evidently went about with his eyes open. In the discussion 
which followed, Mr. Denis Doyle and the Rev. J. Mackenzie have 
borne out the chaplain’s statements, nay they even went a little further. 
‘‘ Tt is a country in which, as he says, Europeans can live and thrive, 
and I hope in the next few years to see that country not with 40,000, 
but with 400,000 Europeans in it. It is quite capable of supporting 
them.” 
After this voluminous evidence, I must confess my own inability 
to reconcile the statements of the gentlemen -above enumer- 
ated with the theoretical] deductions of Mr. Schunke, and I think 
that with me you will prefer the corroborated testimony of people 
who have lived in the country to the unsupported evidence of the 
gentleman who addressed you at the last meeting and whose travels 
in these regions have only been made on an atlas. 
The Chartered Company have at this time 2,000 men in the 
country. They have lost eighteen of their number, of only fourteen 
of whom can the death be attributed to fever. This makes the total 
of seven per mille. Now if you will have the goodness to compare 
those figures with those which have been recently published about 
the mortality of Johannesburg I think you will agree with me 
that the death rate is a low one. Take further into consideration 
that the Pioneers are in a new country—only think of what Kimberley 
and Johannesburg were in the early days!—that they are living 
under conditions unfavourable to good health but conducive to the 
insidious attacks of fever. And yet with all these drawbacks there 
is a death rate of only seven per mille. | 
One more item and I have done. 
“The present road taken by the Chartered Company is a bad 
one and ought never to have been taken. The road was taken 
through the low country in order te avoid Buluwayo, instead of the 
high road of the old elephant hunters being followed. The present 
overland road and the Pungwe route are both as bad as bad 
can be.” Let me again refer to facts and give you figures. The 
following are the altitudes of the various camps and stations from 
the Base Camp to Mount Hampden. 
