Much depends on the way Mr. Hugh Marshall Hole's Lobengula
(Allan, 10s. 6d.) is approached.- You may look on it as a romance, in which light it will be enjoyed as such, and the reader will appreciate the local colour which the author, having been formerly Civil Commissioner at Bulawayo, is able to give his work. But, as history, the book raises suspicions, and contains, moreover, an over-large crop of errors. The author states that " when Victoria came to the throne no single white man had penetrated further north than the headwaters of the Limpopo river." In 1836 the Triegard-Rensburg party had reached the Zoutpansberg, far to the north of the Upper Limpopo. Potgieter's attack in 1847 on Moselekatse is said to have been induced by the report that a Boer girl was held a slave by the Matabele. What is the authority for that allegation ? A writer who treats South African history should have avoided misprints like voorloepers, Graaf Reinet, Liebenburg, Drakensburg, dfisselboom and katel, and should have been at pains to give an accurate account of the famous repulse of the Matabele at Vechtkop in 1886. What the author does succeed, however, in conveying, despite a certain unreliability in details, is atmosphere, and that is much. After all, the certain facts about Lobengula, the last king of the Matabele, are few. Son of a ruthless tyrant, he himself was rather a weak person who failed to control his young warriors, and, in consequence,
paid the penalty to the march of civilization introduced by the machine-gun and Cecil Rhodes.
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