194 MATABELE LAND. 
particular, showing all its twigs red-hot or in flame, 
reminded me of some part of a display of fireworks." 
The following morning Makabo was duly de- 
spatched with two boys — Umfanimboozi and Umfan — 
to the King's, and Frank Oates remained hunting on 
the Ramaqueban, till their return a few days after- 
wards, with a favourable answer to his message. 
On the loth of August he was once more moving 
northwards the same way as he had gone before, 
halting again on the i ith for a couple of days' hunt- 
ing higher up the river, at a point where game 
seemed more than usually abundant. This was the 
place where the road branches off from the Rama- 
queban across the veldt again towards the Tati. 
" I now feel," he writes at this point, on August 
13th, "to be realizing almost for the first time 
some of my old visions of South African sport. 
To-day, soon after starting, I ascended a kopje 
near the waggons, and saw a large herd of quagga. 
Counting roughly, I made out a hundred. It was 
a beautiful sight. All around was the sea of bush, 
with here and there bare patches, and here and 
there kopjes — some of the latter far distant. The 
winding spruits, too, lay as in a map. The quaggas 
were quietly moving on, or standing and playing, or 
brushing away the flies. It was a scene such as I 
used to fancy must be common, and which probably 
was so when the accounts I have read were written, 
and may occur often still in more remote districts." 
The day previous the traveller had shot koodoo, 
hartebeest, and pallah, and seen an immense herd of 
