A DELIGHTFUL MEETING. 
435 
hours previously perfect strangers to one another. A 
chance meeting of this sort is most refreshing and 
delightful, after being months and months alone, and 
tongue-tied in the desert. 
I had the good fortune to exchange my only 
blanket, six days back, for a little Kaffir corn, and 
got an intombi (young girl) to stamp it in a block 
for me, and have been luxuriating on porridge and 
salt for breakfast and dinner ever since ; it is about as 
coarsely ground or crushed as fine gravel, but very 
wholesome, and a great treat it was for the first 
three days, after being so long a time living entirely 
on flesh or fowl, cooked in every conceivable way. 
I am now beginning to think that a little sugar, 
milk, or treacle, might be no bad addition; but in 
another ten days, if all goes well, I may hope for 
some Boers’ meal from the German missionaries at 
Sechele’s, the most hospitable men in the whole 
world. My poor oxen are very much used up, but 
I hope to purchase two or three fresh ones here, 
which will wonderfully assist me. I have left my 
friends behind; their oxen are entirely done up, 
falling in the yoke from sheer poverty and leg 
weariness. 
29 th. — Massouey .—I am here again for the seventh 
time, and last, I hope, as I see no encouragement to 
return. I spent two days at the Bamangwato State, 
and bought six oxen, young, thin, and unbroken. I 
have already had four inspanned, but was obliged 
to fall back on two of my old ones again in place of 
F F 2 
