CHAPTER IV. 
Arrival at Gubuleweyo — Interview with the King — Start for tTie Zam- 
besi — Hope Fountain — Inyati — Difficuhy of obtaining bearers — 
The Zambesi abandoned — Hunting expedition on the Umvungu 
and Gwailo Rivers — Experiences of a half-caste — Birds' nests— 
The indunas' tree — Hunting — A lunar eclipse — Return to Gubule- 
weyo — Wild fruit. 
The account of Frank Oates's present stay at Gub- 
uleweyo, and his first impressions of the town and 
its inhabitants, taken from his Journal, is somewhat 
scanty. This was one of those more striking epi- 
sodes in the journey, which needed no written record 
to impress their details upon his mind, and the nar- 
rative of which in this, as in other similar instances, 
is consequently the most wanting, where the reader 
would naturally expect and desire to find it the 
fullest. The account, such as it is, of his arrival at 
the town, and the first two days spent there, is taken 
as follows from his Journal : — 
''September i^tk. — Another trek of about an 
hour and a half brought us, about 9 a.m., to Gubule- 
weyo. There is not much timber as the kraal is 
approached. The scene is picturesque but desolate, 
the road winding and steep. Some of the peculiar- 
looking trees ^ are here of great size. Strings of 
^ Probably the Euphorbia above referred to (vide p. 46), which 
frequently attains the size of a small tree. 
