hodesia has her own Huckleberry Finn in the person of Kingsley Fairbridge, born in 1885, who in his autobiography describes life in the country during the first decade after the Occupation.

ingsley’s father, Rhys Seymour Fairbridge of Port Elizabeth, was employed by the British South Africa Company in 1891 to survey the Beira-Mashonaland railway. R. S. Fairbridge later planned modern Umtali, and also served in the fighting during 1893 and 1896.

e was accompanied on his surveying work round the Eastern Districts in the Umtali area by his son Kingsley. The boy also made many expeditions, lasting for days on end, into the veld in the company of his African friend Jack and his dog Vic. One day when walking back to Umtali, famished because his rations had run out three days earlier, young Kingsley saw a startingly clear vision of farm buildinqs with smoke coming out of their chimneys, standing among the lovely hills which surround the town. It was then that the boy conceived the idea of populating the empty spaces of the Commonwealth from the teeming cities of Britain, and he called out aloud: "Some day I will bring farmers here."

ingsley Fairbridge went to Exeter College, Oxford, in 1908 as a Rhodes Scholar, and faithful to his vision, next year founded the Child Emigration Society for the purpose of educating orphans and neglected children by means of farm schools. Unfortunately the British South Africa Company did not at the time consider the scheme suitable to Rhodesia and in 1912 Kingsley Fairbridge emigrated to Australia where his ideas received support and were expanded.

charming statue of Kingsley Fairbridge with Jack and Vic stands today on Christmas Pass overlooking Umtali.

nother member of the same gifted family, William Ernest Fairbridge, came out to Rhodesia in June 1891 and with exceptional ingenuity produced the first copy of the Mashonaland Herald on 27 June 1891 by means of a duplicating cyclostyle. W. E. Fairbridge was also distinguished by being made first Mayor of Salisbury in 1897-98. In 1904 he became General Manager of the Argus Company in Johannesburg, a position which he filled until his retirement in 1915.