Our SKYPE Status:
A TOWN CALLED VICTORIA
Katherine Sayce
ONE OF the most remote and - inaccessible outposts of the Great Queen's empire in 1890 must surely have been the infant settlement in Mashonaland which bare her name - Fort Victoria. It was here that the Pioneer Column rested briefly an its trek to Mount Hampden, leaving behind a small contingent which established the fort around which Rhodesia's first town grew up.
This is an account of its birth and first twenty-five years of its eventful life. Being an the main route from the Cape to Salisbury it soon became a centre of communications and commerce although the greatest stimulus to its growth came from an unshakeable faith in the mineral wealth of the district, a belief no doubt fostered by the evidence of the gold-mining activity of the ancients in the precincts of the nearby Zimbabwe Ruins. The author has diligently researched this period of the town's early history and painted a fascinating picture of the daily lives of those who lived there. One identifies with their hopes and hardships, gets to' know many of them by name, and shares in their triumphs and sorrows.
It was Fort Victoria which became the epicenter of the first clash with the warlike Matabele, and it was from its dusty streets that Allan Wilson and his fourteen comrades marched against Lobengula to their deaths in the Shangani. Here we meet their widows and children.
With the growth of Bulawayo, Victoria found itself side-tracked, but it refused to' give up hope of the boom which it always saw 'just around the corner'. Doggedly its hardy frontiersmen worked their mines, developed their farms, expanded their commerce, built their churches, added schooling and hospital facilities, slaked their thirst with whisky - and extended their cemetery. Their social life and, indeed, most of their business activities, revolved around the Thatched House Hotel which has a very special place in the: unfolding of the tale.
This well rounded story, with its numerous illustrations, reconstructs Fort Victoria's pioneering past, presenting a record of achievement in adversity which one may read with pride.
1978 Used, very good condition.
|  |