xiv PREFACE. 



visited it, to remain substantially the same, or only 

 to have changed in points of minor interest. The 

 abandonment, however, of the Tati Gold-mine and 

 the establishment of Khame in the Bamangwato 

 sovereignty perhaps demand attention. 



In editing this work it has been my object to 

 preserve, wherever possible, the writer's narrative in 

 exactly his own words ; and this plan has been 

 steadily adhered to throughout, those passages 

 only being omitted which appeared little likely 

 to interest the general reader, or in which — as 

 several times occurred — old ground was re-tra- 

 versed. In such cases the intervening periods 

 have been bridged over by a short narrative of 

 my own, intended merely to connect the story 

 and weld the whole together. The maps, it may 

 be added, are all of them the result of the travel- 

 ler's own special observations, recorded as he 

 went along. 



Of the illustrations in the body of the work, I 

 may remark that they are all from original drawings 

 taken on the spot, or from the objects they purport 

 to represent. Some are from sketches by the late 

 Frank Oates ; the remainder — and these the larger 

 number — from those of his brother, W. E. Oates, 

 who accompanied him during a portion of his 

 journey. It may therefore perhaps be fairly 

 claimed for them that, whatever their artistic 



