The news from Rhodesia does not improve, and it is
evident that the Colony is temporarily lost. According to the latest accounts, all Mashonaland is " up," and must be subdued by troops shipped from the Cape via Beira, while in Rhodesia we hold nothing except the territory within a ride from the forts, and not that in peace. There are squads of fighting natives in every direction, and isolated farmers are every- where attacked and murdered. The Matabeles, too, are learning the secret that if they do not attack Fort Salisbury or Bulawayo they are tolerably safe, the white men for all their courage hesitating to attack them in position amidst the ranges of hills. There is such a deficiency of food that the horses for the mounted troopers are hardly able to move, and it becomes more and more difficult to relieve the groups of settlers who send in for assistance. Everything, in fact, points to a long and indecisive guerilla war, during which it will be necessary to appeal for Imperial assistance, which will hardly be given on any great scale without a demand from Parliament that the Colonial Office shall hold itself responsible for Rhodesia. A sovereign authority from home begins to be urgently required, if only to prevent the quarrel between whites and blacks becoming internecine. For the moment, the white " policy " may be summed up in the American pioneer's sentence, "Indians is pizon wherever found," and General Carrington has found it needful to issue a sharp order that women and children and the wounded are not to be put to death.
