the manure was used for agricultural purposes, as it is in Northern Nigeria, where the Fulani herdsmen contract with the Hausa agriculturalists for quartering their herds in the dry season upon the latter's fields.
Henceforth the "naked men with shields" became bondsmen to the Company and its shareholders, as the Mashonas, whom the Company claimed to have saved from Matabele oppression, had already become. The gold of Southern Rhodesia had to be won. It could only be won by native labour. But an African people of herdsmen and agriculturists does not take kindly to digging for gold. Moreover, the Matabele, unlike the Mashonas, had a peculiar aversion to working below ground. Such scruples and prejudices could not be expected to carry weight with the members of a superior race. So the Company soon added to the cultural advantages it had already bestowed upon the Matabele a process whereby these backward folk might become conversant with the dignity which comes from work, however uncongenial, performed for the benefit of others.
Forced labour, gradually assuming a more stringent and extensive character as the multifold requirements of the white men grew with the development of the "farms" and the mines, succeeded the conquest of the country. The Buluwayo Chronicle of February 22, 1896, recorded that: "The Native Commissioners have done good work in procuring native labour. During the months of October, November, and December they supplied to the mining and other industries in Matabeleland no less than 9,000 boys." On February 27 a letter from the Chief Native Commissioner Taylor to the Buluwayo Chamber of Mines reported that: "The number of natives supplied for labour to the mines and for other purposes from the different districts in Matabeleland totals 9,102." Some hundreds of native police were raised and armed, and, as happens everywhere in Africa where the supervision is not strict, committed many brutal acts. Their principal duty appears to have been "assisting" to procure the needed supply of labour, and hunting down deserters. Their tyranny was even more oppressive among the Mashonas than among the Matabele, owing to the milder character of the former. Writing of these police in 1898 Mr. H. C. Thomson says: "They are the scourge of the country, and, like the Zaptcihs in Turkey, do more than
