places in which we only halted a few hours where I should have been glad to stay on indefinitely, and I saw enough of the West Matabele country to satisfy me that an explorer might find things of interest in it to occupy him for a year at least.
During our passage along the valley our dogs started two vlakvarks. White men seized their guns, black men followed with their assegais, and a hot chase lasted for twenty minutes before the creatures were brought down. Although it has more formidable tusks than any other of its species, in comparison with the European wild boar, the vlakvark is a feeble, spiritless creature; its skin is extremely thin, and nothing gives it so remarkable an appearance as its conspicuous white whiskers.
I did not get much sleep on the first night after the transfer of my boxes; they had been so shaken about in their day’s journey that I could not lie down to rest until I had properly rearranged them. Next morning while passing over the last of the grassy glades that are so frequent between the Zambesi district and the sandy pool plateau, I observed that herds of ostriches had been along the game-tracks. Had I been independent I should certainly have stayed a day or two and made a deliberate investigation of some of the habits of these birds by following up their traces into the woods; but here, as along the rest of the way, although I took every available opportunity of seeing what I could, and devoted much of the night to recording what I had seen by day, I was constantly deploring the rapid pace at which we had to travel.
Before reaching Henry’s Pan on the 3rd of
