while, bearing in great part the extraordinary expenses, amounting to £250,000
annually for the first two years, of the development of the
undertaking of the British South Africa Company in Mashonaland.
Fortunately,
by the extraordinary executive ability of Dr. Jameson, who was
appointed Administrator for the Chartered Company in 1891, the immense
outlay required of the company was reduced to only £30,000
annually. The thriving town of Victoria was founded and the settlement
of the country was most energetically pressed in spite of every
obstacle. But when the way for the profitable advance of the company's
operations seemed to be clearing, its Colony was menaced in 1893 with utter destruction by the attack of the fierce Matabeles.
Lobengula
had viewed the entry of the Rhodes expedition into the territory north
of his kingdom with rising disgust, accentuated by his failure to stop
it, but it was two years before he came to the point of open attack. He
had been accustomed, all his life long, to regard the district occupied
by his neighbors,
