The Horns of the Buffalo by John Wilcox Page A

you.’
    Simon groaned inwardly.
    â€˜Anyway, the damned war hasn’t begun yet. And, of course, the Governor has gone down there to stop it starting.’ The Colonel’s teeth gleamed in the darkened room. ‘No, my boy. We have something rather more interesting for you to do.’
    He pushed back his chair and strode to a map that dominated one wall. ‘Know much about South Africa?’
    â€˜Very little, I’m afraid, sir. There wasn’t much time to do research before I left England.’
    â€˜Right. Perhaps best to start with a clean slate, anyway. You must first get the geography in your mind.’ He picked up a pointer. ‘Here we are.’ He tapped the Cape Colony at the bottom of the map, the largest territory shown. Then his pointer moved upwards and eastwards. ‘Here’s British Kaffraria, where your Welsh boys are. You mustn’t worry about Basutoland and Griqualand East and West, here. They’re annexed and reasonably quiet. To the north of the Orange River here is a wilderness of desert, with a few bushmen and nothing else. No interest to anyone.’
    He gripped his cheroot with his teeth so that it tipped up and the smoke curled clear of his eyes. The pointer swung in an arc from top right of the map to top centre. ‘Here,’ he said, wrinkling his eyes, ‘here’s where the trouble starts.’
    The pointer jabbed at the middle of the map. ‘Orange Free State, where the Boers trekked to fifty years ago to get away from us. See?’ The pointer moved north-east. ‘Here. The Transvaal. Huge territory. High plateau country. Both of ’em independent Boer republics. Got it?’
    Simon nodded.
    The pointer swung right and down. ‘Natal. British but independent of the Cape Colony. Usual mixed bag of settlers but mainly British and natives. Lush, good country. And here . . .’ The pointer moved up the coast to a rectangular strip of seaboard, fringed on the north by Portuguese territory, by Natal to the south-west and the Transvaal to the north-west. ‘This,’ said the Colonel, ‘is Zululand. A completely independent nation, ruled by King Cetswayo.’
    Lamb walked back to his desk and stubbed out his cheroot. ‘The problems of this colony, Fonthill, are fundamentally those of every country in the world: people and land. We have European underpopulation and native overpopulation, of course, the same as throughout the Empire. But here the Europeans are an infernal mixture of anti-British, damned touchy Boers, British settlers and a poacher’s bag of the sweepings of the rest of Europe.’ He leaned forward. ‘And the natives are another hell’s brew: servile coastal Kaffirs, various tribes of Bantu inland, and up there,’ he gestured over his left shoulder, ‘the Zulu nation.’
    Simon stood up and walked to the giant wall map. ‘I can understand that, sir,’ he said. ‘But land? This is a huge country, and from the little I’ve seen of it, it is very fertile. Surely there is enough to go round?’
    â€˜Stuff!’ The little man bounded to his feet. ‘You know nothing of it yet. Yes, the territory is enormous.’ He swept the map with his palm. ‘Well-watered, grassy flatlands is what everybody - white and black man alike - wants. But there is not enough of that to go around. We’ve got steep mountain ranges and arid tracts eating up vast acreages, and great stretches of potentially fertile flatlands that are only usable when we get water trickling through the stony riverbeds for a couple of months a year. Winter pasturage is always a problem, and when we have a drought it can be as bad as India.’
    The Colonel bristled with animation, his blue eyes shining from his seamed face as he jabbed the map in emphasis. Simon realised that this was a breed of soldier new to him. He had long been accustomed to the languid career officer typified by