104 MATABELE LAND. 



" Now Thomson tells me we must make haste 

 and return to the waggon, as the soldiers are begin- 

 ning to march out, and they are all going outside, 

 accompanied by the king and his court. We return, 

 and the troops march out and take up a position in 

 a huge, dense circle outside the kraal. There may 

 be three, four, or even five thousand of them, and 

 perhaps ten thousand people in all." 1 



" January gtk. — Hot day ; short heavy shower 

 in the afternoon. Dancing at the kraal — second 

 day (or was Wednesday also a day ? If so, this is 

 the third). Different parties dancing ; majakas 

 and girls separately, though in some cases girls 

 are introduced into the majakas' dance. King 

 had waggon taken out by Kaffirs. Selous 2 looked 

 at my guns. Rain came on, and he sat in my 

 tent. He tells me how he was once lost between 

 Bamangwato and Tati for four days. He had 

 had a cup of coffee, and gone out hunting. That 

 night he slept in the veldt ; it was July, and the 

 nights were very cold. He had only a shirt and 

 trousers on, and had no matches. He used his last 

 three cartridges in trying to make a fire. The 

 second and third days he still wandered. I think it 

 was the end of the second day that he lost his horse. 

 The evening of the fourth day he came to Palatswe 

 water and got milk of a Kaffir. He walked back 



1 Here the day's entry ends abruptly, with only a few brief notes in- 

 tended for the writer's future guidance, and unavailable for another's use. 



2 Mr. F. C. Selous, the gentleman here referred to, had already 

 been out some time hunting in South Africa, and was subsequently 

 again met with by Frank Oates near the Victoria Falls. 



