34 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



first entering the country are now detained, while 

 messengers are sent to the king to give notice of their 

 arrival. A day later we reached the Mangwe, where 

 John Lee, a man of mixed Dutch and English 

 parentage, has established himself ; he was away in 

 the hunting veldt, but on the many subsequent 

 occasions when I have found him at home, he has 

 invariably treated me with the greatest kindness and 

 hospitality. We saw by the spoor that a large white 

 rhinoceros had crossed the road within one hundred 

 yards of Lee's house. Another twelve miles brought 

 us to Minyama's kraal, the then frontier outpost of 

 the Matabele country ; here we were delayed while 

 messengers were sent on to Lobengula, asking his 

 permission to enter the country, and here for the 

 first time I realised being among savages, for it was 

 the first place where I saw no European clothes, and 

 I must say the people in their own dress, or rather 

 want of dress, looked infinitely better than the 

 greasy-shirted, ragged-trousered men to whom I had 

 been accustomed among the Bechuana tribes. 



The greatest part of the inhabitants about here 

 are Makalakas, whose native dress for both men and 

 women is almost identical with that of the Bechuanas, 

 than whom I think them, especially the women, a 

 better-looking race. The few real Matabele girls 

 we saw were very pleasant to the eye, having most 

 good-tempered-looking faces, and fine, upright, well- 

 developed, dark chocolate-coloured figures, the naked 

 beauty of which was but little hidden by their very 

 scanty attire, which in some cases consisted of a 

 small flap of goat or antelope skin in front and 

 another behind, and in others of a little fringe of 

 " umbentla " (a soft fibre extracted from a kind of 

 grass) in front, and nothing at all behind. The 



