myself that led me to undertake the journey, but I have since congratulated myself very much upon the decision to which I came.
Leaving my waggon in the charge of Westbeech’s people, I started off with my new friends. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Westbeech, Mr. and Mrs. Francis, Bauren, Oppenshaw, Walsh, and myself, besides four Cape half-castes, my own Masupia servant, and twenty Makalalas and Matabele, who were engaged as bearers, and carried our provisions, cooking-apparatus, and wraps. We travelled in a couple of waggons as far as the Gashuma Flat, the way thither being attractive and pleasant for travellers. It was about three o’clock in the morning when we reached the first pools on the plain, whence we altered our course, which previously had been north-north-west, to east-north-east towards the falls.
The next portion of our route lay through a district known to be so much infested by the tsetse-fly, that we left our bullocks and waggons, and proceeded in a cart drawn by six donkeys. We did not, however, start until the 15th, waiting till we had put up a thoroughly substantial fence around the waggons, because we had noticed a number of lion-tracks in the neighbourhood. The plain was adorned with some splendid fan-palms and dense palm-thickets. The grass had been nearly all burnt down, but here and there, in patches where it had begun to sprout again, pretty little orbeki-gazelles were lying in twos or fours quite flat on the ground, and would suddenly start up at our approach and bound away, turning round to gaze at us when they were at a safe distance. Oppen-
