A TOUCHING INCIDENT. 267 



One incident of Dr. Bradshaw's journey should 

 not be left unnoticed. It appears that when the 

 party were many miles from the grave, one of Frank 

 Oates's pointers — his favourite " Rail" — was found 

 to be missing, and boys were sent back in search of 

 him. These men sought long and wandered far in 

 vain, till at length in their pursuit they got back even 

 to the grave, and there, patiently watching, they 

 found the devoted creature laid. A little longer, and 

 he must inevitably have fallen a prey to lions or other 

 wild beasts, but now he was taken down with his 

 companion to Bamangwato, whence they were sub- 

 sequently conveyed to England. And thus it hap- 

 pened that, whilst Frank Oates's friends at home 

 were rejoicing at the speedy prospect of his return 

 and wholly unsuspicious of the truth, this faithful dog 

 was watching, the sole mourner, by his grave. 1 



The very day of Frank Oates's death his brother 

 William — returned from his yachting trip to Spitz- 

 bergen — sailed from England for South Africa, to 

 join him, accompanied by Mr. Gilchrist, the gentle- 

 man already mentioned in these pages, whom the 

 brothers had met when they first reached Durban 

 two years previously, and had afterwards travelled 

 with in the interior, William Oates having returned 

 with him to England. The day these two sailed 

 from England — about an hour before the vessel left 



1 Mr. Gilchrist, whose subsequent journey into the interior is re- 

 lated in the following pages, and who brought the particulars of this 

 and other incidents connected with the narrative to England, under- 

 stood the dog to have gone back to his master's grave the whole 

 way from the Tati settlement— a distance of nearly eighty miles. 



