104 MATABELE LAND. 
"Now Thomson tells me we must make haste and 
return to the waggon, as the soldiers are beghining to 
march out, and they are all going outside, accompanied 
by the king and his court. We return, and the troops 
march out and take up position in a huge, dense 
circle outside the kraal. There may be three, four, 
or even five thousand of them, and perhaps ten 
thousand people in all." ^ 
"■ January gtk. — Hot day; short heavy shower 
in the afternoon. Dancing at the kraal — second 
day (or was Wednesday also a day ? If so, this is 
the third). Different parties dancing ; majachas 
and girls separately, though in some cases girls 
are introduced into the majachas' dance. King 
had waggon taken out by Kafirs. Selous ^ looked 
at my guns. Rain came on, and he sat in my 
tent. He tells me how he was once lost between 
Bamangwato and Tati for four days. He had 
had a cup of coffee, and gone out hunting. That 
night he slept in the veldt ; it was July, and the 
nights were very cold. He had only a shirt and 
trousers on, and had no matches. He used his last 
three cartridges in trying to make a fire. The 
second and third days he still wandered. I think it 
was the end of the second day that he lost his horse. 
The evening of the fourth day he came to Palatswe 
^ Here the day's entry ends abruptly, with only a few brief notes 
intended for the writer's future guidance, and unavailable for another's 
use. 
2 This gentleman, Mr. F. C. Selous, had already been out some 
time hunting in South Africa, and was subsequently again met with by 
Frank Oates near the Victoria Falls. 
