ABSTRACT

The senior representative of the Company in Matabeleland was Mr. Andrew Henry Farrell Duncan, a retired naval officer, who had recently returned from leave in England and had been engaged in fighting the rinderpest. He was quick to grasp the necessity for firm action, and as a preliminary step arranged that a Justice of the Peace—the Hon. The history of the outbreak in Matabeleland has been faithfully and graphically told by the late F. C. Selous, and that of the subsequent military operations in books by Plumer, Baden-Powell and Laing, and in the published reports of the Company. The Company’s officials sent them a supply of rifles and ammunition and urged them to fall back on Salisbury, but they preferred to remain and were confident of being able to hold their own.