DEFECTION OF KLAAS. 137 
some of them had taken meat belonging to some 
Bushmen from Manyami's. The latter complained 
to the king, who said the Mungwato Bushmen were 
to be killed. This was last winter. This morning 
Klaas went away, leaving the two boys. I now 
found he was going away to hunt. Jacobs had sent 
for him to hunt for elephants, said to be on the 
Shashe. Presently the two Bushmen took their 
guns and skins and walked off. I immediately felt 
the strongest suspicion, and called Lee's attention to 
them. He questioned them, and they told him they 
were going to hunt. I felt very uneasy, and wanted 
him to stop them, but he seemed to think it was 
all right. However, they did not return at night. 
We think Klaas had arranged all this. . . . One of 
Smith's boys, a Matabele, was one of the party who 
killed the Bushmen, but he says he thinks he could 
not find the place, the leaves being now on the trees. 
He could find it, he says, going from his own kraal, 
but not from here. He evidently, however, does 
not want, or care, to go. It is somewhere, a day or 
a day and a half's walk off, up the Ramaqueban." 
The two Bushmen, as Frank Gates had antici- 
pated, failing after this to reappear, the search for 
the remains had now for the present to be abandoned, 
but later in the year, as will presently be seen, he 
succeeded in obtaining possession of them. 
The Bushmen of this country— such was Karl 
Lee's account of them — appear to be scattered over 
the whole district north of Mungwato, keeping princi- 
pally near the waggon-road, to get hunting jobs and 
