"The most interesting book of its kind is Captain Donovan's 'With Wilson in Matabeleland.'" -Review of Reviews, 1895
"Will excite attention." - The Athenaeum 1894
"This is a story well told Of the heroic Major Wilson and Capt. Lendy, who lost their lives in Matabeleland in so gallant a manner, when hunting down Lobengula." - Asiatic Quarterly Review 1896
Captain Donovan, of the British Army Service Corps, went out to South Africa on a hunting expedition in May 1893 without any expectation of finding himself involved in the Matabele War, of the approach of which there was at that time no indication. His book is, therefore, of special value for the light it throws on the causes that brought about the commencement of hostilities, and on the conduct of the war itself.
His book may conveniently be divided into two parts, the first a record of exciting travel and sport, the second a quite independent account of the much criticized and often misunderstood Matabele War.
From May to September 1893 Captain Donovan and his companion, Mr. George Bankes, were engaged in the pursuit of game big. The first encounter with lions, "looking in the grey light of the morning like enormous sheep," is graphically described. Two fine, male lions were taken. On the Bubyé River the sportsmen fell in with buffalo, of which they took four.
At Ranganas Randt the author began to hear from the natives blood-curdling stories of the Matabele, and saw one of the mutilated survivors of the victims of the Matabele raid on Victoria, who assured him that by the time he arrived there he would not find a white man alive.
In Victoria Captain Donovan found the Matabele scare at its height. He responded to Dr. Jameson's message calling on every one to come in and help to "repel the savages," and made himself thoroughly acquainted with the real cause of the war.
The panic among the Europeans was a real one. "Day after day I met Dutchmen, and, to my sorrow and their everlasting disgrace, men calling themselves Britishers, flying down country and saying that the Matabele would 'wipe out' Victoria."
It appears that in this war Capt. Lendy had the honour of proving for the first time the "inestimable worth of the Maxim gun." It was to the completeness of the precautions taken as much as to the power and well-won prestige of the Maxim guns that the little force of colonists owed their marvellous escape from such disasters.
Captain Donovan, who was not in the employ of the Chartered Company, was strongly inclined to be a hostile critic; and this attitude of mind was not changed till he saw for himself the atrocities perpetrated by the Matabele.
It is characteristic of the temper of Wilson's men, who would say that they would rather follow Wilson to hell than any other man to heaven. Capt. Donovan was sent away by Major Forbes to take the despatches to Bulawayo before the final catastrophe. Captain Donovan left Matabeleland, the war being apparently over, before the death of Wilson and his men, which was the one disaster, as it was also the crowning display of heroic courage and constancy, in the whole campaign.
About the author:
Charles Henry Wynne Donovan (1860-1898), son of Richard Donovan, of Ballymore, Co. Wexford was educated at Clifton College; joined the Wexford Militia, 1880, and 4th Dragoon Guards, 1882; served with the Nile Expeditionary Force, 1884-5; transferred to Army Service Corps, 1880; served in the Ashanti War, 1895, and in the frontier troubles at Sierra Leone, 1898, where he was fatally wounded.
