viii PREFACE. 
visited it, to remain substantially the same, or only 
changed in points of minor interest. The aban- 
donment, however, of the Tati Gold-mine and 
the establishment of Kama in the Bamangwato 
sovereignty perhaps demand attention. 
In editing this work it has been my object to 
preserve, wherever possible, the writer's narrative in 
exactly his own words ; and this plan has been 
steadily adhered to throughout, those passages 
only being omitted which appeared little likely 
to interest the general reader, or in which — as 
several times occurred — old ground was re -tra- 
versed. In such cases the intervening periods 
have been bridged over by a short narrative of 
my own, intended merely to connect the story 
and weld the whole together. The maps, it may 
be added, are all of them the result of the travel- 
ler's own special observations, recorded as he 
went along. 
Of the illustrations in the body of the work, I 
may remark that they are all from original drawings 
taken on the spot, or from the objects they purport 
to represent. Some are from sketches by the late 
Frank Oates ; the remainder — and these the larger 
number — from those of his brother, W. E. Oates, 
who accompanied him during a portion of his 
journey. It may therefore perhaps be fairly 
claimed for them that, whatever their artistic 
