176 



MATABELE LAND. 



NATIVE BUILDING, SHASHI RIVER. 



(as before stated) contains plenty of water, flows 

 away towards the south-west, as shown by the bent 

 reeds in its now dry sandy bed. 1 



" Started again at 1.20 p.m. and went about eight 

 miles; first through ' mopani-veldt,' with fine fruit- 

 trees in it, and a little before outspanning passed 



1 This river, formerly represented in the maps of this district as 

 taking its rise but a few miles from here, and flowing away directly to 

 the westward towards the salt lakes, is, in reality — as the traveller 

 afterwards ascertained — a part of the Shashi River, the same river 

 which is crossed on the Bamangwato and Tati road, a few miles 

 before reaching Tati, coming north. Mr. Dobie, of the mine — so he 

 informed Frank Oates — had, moreover, struck the river about thirty 

 miles northward of the drift on which the waggons were now out- 

 spanned, and had found it a big river even there, where, according to 

 the maps, it is not even in existence. The slate formation in which 

 the gold is found runs, it seems, to a narrow point as far as this river 

 drift, and there ceases altogether. 



