to travel for two hours through the sandy underwood to the next of the Klamaklenyana springs. Here I met an elephant-hunter named Mayer and a Dutchman, Mynheer Herbst, and only a little further on at another watering-place I fell in with a second Dutchman called Jakobs, and Mr. Kurtin, an ivory-trader. Mr. Kurtin told me that on previous expeditions into this neighbourhood he had lost no fewer than sixty-six oxen through the poisonous plant that I have mentioned. Jakobs entertained us with the accounts of his hunting-expeditions, and particularly with some adventures of the famous Pit Jacobs. Mayer and Herbst were in partnership, and had recently had the satisfaction of shooting a fine female elephant; they had just engaged the services of some Makalakas, who a few days previously had offered themselves to me, but so bad was my opinion of all that branch of the Bantus, and so evil was the appearance of the men themselves, that not only would I have nothing to do with them, but recommended their new employers to get rid of them at once. To their cost, however, they acted without regard to my advice. When I met Mayer some seven months later, he told me that they had robbed him freely and had then run away.
It was about this time that I made my first acquaintance with the Madenassanas, the serfs of the Bamangwatos. They are a fine race, tall and strongly built, especially the men, but with a repulsive cast of countenance, so that it was somewhat surprising to find from time to time some nice-looking faces among the women. Their skin is almost black, and they have stiff woolly hair which hangs down for more than an inch over their fore-
