256 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



Scotch men whose innate love of enterprise, combined 

 with indomitable perseverance, has led them to try 

 their fortune in every unexplored corner of the 

 globe, and it is the individual efforts of a host of 

 such men in different parts of the world that have 

 won for Great Britain the goodly share of the earth's 

 surface which she at present possesses. This energetic 

 Englishman first opened a trade with Sipopo, king 

 of the Barotse, in 1871, and until the assassination 

 of that potentate in 1876 yearly brought out from 

 the Zambesi country from 20,000 to 30,000 lbs. of 

 ivory. Since that time, the country having been in 

 a state of anarchy, the trade has, of course, very 

 much fallen off. In 1873 Mr. Westbeech visited 

 the Barotse valley, where he remained as the guest 

 of Sipopo until June 1874. He there met a 

 Portuguese trader, Joao Ferreira, spoken of by 

 Cameron, and is himself the Englishman " Georgo " 

 referred to by him. 



On the I St of December, as it was necessary for 

 me to fetch some property belonging to me that was 

 lying on the Diamond Fields and get back again to 

 the interior by the end of the rainy season, I bade 

 adieu to my friends at Tati and trekked away to the 

 south, following the main waggon-road leading to 

 Bamangwato. I took both my waggons with me 

 and three horses, and was accompanied by two 

 Europeans — Mr. Edwin Miller, a young colonist 

 and a first-rate game shot, who was in my service, 

 and a Mr. Bell, who had made an unsuccessful 

 trading trip to the Zambesi, and to whom I was now 

 giving a passage to the Diamond Fields. On my 

 journey down country and back again, which occupie4 

 the best part of five months, only one incident 

 happened worth relating, and as the full account of 



