DEFECTION OF KLAAS. 137 



some of them had taken meat belonging to some 

 Bushmen from Monyama'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 

 Shashi. 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 

 Smit'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 Ramakwebani." 



The two Bushmen, as Frank Oates 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 be seen presently, 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 



