A MASHONA QUEEN.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 31, 27 October 1894, Page 3

A MASHONA QUEEN.

One morning a Mashona Queen came to see'us. She was a powerful chieftainess, owning sway over many kraals. At the-battle of Chua she brought her men to fight for the chartered company, and led them herself, and when they ran away, as Mashonas generally do, smashed in with her battle-axe the heads of as many runaways as she could catch. She herself remained under fire with the utmost composure. The Queen stalked up to the great fig tree before our door and squatted under it, sending a man, bearing her battle-axe of black wood elaborately inlaid with brass, to anounce her arrival to us. Another man brought presents to us. These were somewhat unworthy of a great potentate, consisting as they did of a basket of meal, two eggs and six sweet potatoes. It was clearly a case of accepting the will for the deed ! The Queen was a fine specimen of animal humanity, with a splendid coarse physique and an ugly brutal face. She accepted tea, passing her mug after

drinking, to the two men who sat behind her. These were two of her husbands. We were told that she had several, whom she divorced or knocked on the head as seemed most convenient, Curiously enough, in the kraals governed by a chieftainess, the other women are in a state of, if possible, more abject subjection than when under the rule of a chief. The men seem to revenge on their wives the respect they are forced to show to their Queen. Our visitor, at first interesting and amusing, soon became an awful bore. We could not get rid of her. When the tea, jam and cookies were finshed, when she had delivered a message from her uncle to the effect that the white women were welcome, though he was too great a personage to pay them a visit, we hoped she would go. Not at all! She demanded “ Bire water,” and w*as much disappointed at not receiving any. Then she took a fancy to a bright tin plate—all our plates were tin, bright, new, and glittering therefore like silver. Should we sacrifice a precious plate and so deliver ourselves from this swarthy incubus! We consulted together, and finally decided on presenting the plate, with an intimation that after so splendid a present the white women would not consider her polite if she remained. One of the Mashonas who could speak English interpreted. Our intimation had the desired effect. A German master of the ceremonies is not a greater stickler for etiquette than an African chief or chieftainess . As the Queen got up to leave, her escort, clapping their hands in token of respect, trotted away, the chieftainess striding after them, having first handed her plate to one of her husbands to carry, and giving the other a little packet of brown sugar which she had obtained from us:—From adventures in Mashona land by two hospital nurses.