THE TATI SETTLEMENT. 29 
other side of the river, he says, is under Lobengula, 
this under Sekomi, and Hendrik says the Makalakas 
are not independent, all here belonging to the Mata- 
bele and Mungwato sovereignties. These Bushmen 
are, I suppose, the original inhabitants. Hendrik 
says they are slaves to the others. They certainly 
are outcasts. This man does not beg, takes what 
• 
is given him, and lies naked with his head on a 
stone by the fire at night. He has no blanket. . . . 
Watched the Bushman make his fire with two sticks. 
He took off his sandals, placed a stick on one of 
them, and holding it firm with his foot, twisted the 
other stick rapidly between both hands, working it 
in a little hollow of the first stick, till black dust 
began to form. This soon turned red-hot, and there 
was fire like that in a pipe." 
Continuing their journey on the 26th, the brothers 
reached the Tati the same evening, where a small 
English settlement of a few huts has collected round 
the gold mines, which are being worked by Sir 
John Swinburne. " There is nothing remarkable in 
the scenery here," writes Frank Oates soon after 
their arrival ; " a few kopjes only, with low scrub 
and trees. Everything is very much dried up. The 
river is broad, with deep sand in its bed. Yester- 
day Nelson^ gave me a live fish, four or five inches 
long, something like a perch. He says they live in 
the sand now. Water is got by digging in the river's 
bed. . . . The veldt where we are outspanned," 
he concludes, " is quite ploughed up with the spoor 
^ Mr. Nelson of the mine. 
