THE TATI SETTLEMENT. 29 



other side of the river, he says, is under Lobengula, 

 this under Sekhomi, and Hendrik says the Makalakas 

 are not independent, all here belonging to the Mata- 

 bele and Mun^wato sovereignties. These Bushmen 

 are, I suppose, the original inhabitants. Hendrik 

 says they are slaves to the others. They certainly 

 are outcasts. This man does not beg, takes what 

 is given him, and lies naked with his head on a 

 stone by the fire at night. He has no blanket. . . . 

 Watched the Bushman make his fire with two sticks. 

 He took off his sandals, placed a stick on one of 

 them, and holding it firm with his foot, twisted the 

 other stick rapidly between both hands, working it 

 in a little hollow of the first stick, till black dust 

 began to form. This soon turned red-hot, and there 

 was fire like that in a pipe." 



Continuing their journey on the 26th, the brothers 

 reached the Tati the same evening, where a small 

 English settlement of a few huts has collected round 

 the gold-mine which, at the time of the present 

 narrative, was being worked by Sir John Swin- 

 burne. " There is nothing remarkable in the 

 scenery here," writes Frank Oates soon after their 

 arrival ; " a few kopjes only, with low scrub and 

 trees. Everything is very much dried up. The 

 river is broad, with deep sand in its bed. Yester- 

 day Nelsson 1 gave me a live fish, four or five inches 

 long, something like a perch. He says they live in 

 the sand now. Water is got by digging in the river's 

 bed. . . . The veldt where we are outspanned," he 



1 Mr. Nelsson of the mine. 



