136 MATABELE LAND. 
scarcity of the game, the Dutchman soon after — 
about the 20th — took his departure, returning to 
John Lee's, the Hottentot having left two days 
previously for the Shashe River, whither he had 
been summoned to join another Dutch hunter, Piet 
Jacobs, in search of elephant. 
A little before the latter's departure Frank Oates 
had chanced to hear from him that, at a spot not 
far from their encampment, some miles up the river, 
a number of Bushmen had been murdered the pre- 
vious year, and he resolved, if possible, to visit the 
place, that he might obtain some of their remains. 
In this search his informant had undertaken to 
accompany him, and had even sent to Tati for a 
reliable guide to the spot, when suddenly, at the last 
moment, he changed his mind, and excused himself 
from going upon the plea of illness. The circum- 
stances of his defection and some other incidents of 
the day are thus related in the traveller's Journal : — 
''February i2>tk. — Fine day; the first day with- 
out rain for an age. Last night Klaas (the Hotten- 
tot) told me he was going on to Tati to-day, being 
too unwell to accompany me in my excursion in 
quest of the bones, but would leave me his two 
Bushmen — the one he had sent for from Tati, who 
knew the place, and the one he has had with him 
here. The former was out hunting, when his 
fourteen companions — men, women, and children — 
were killed at their hunting kraal by the Matabele. 
He found them all dead on his return. It seems 
that they were a party of Mungwato Bushmen, and 
