that I had collected during the last five days were damaged, and many of them quite destroyed.
We had a toilsome march next day through a dense sandy underwood. In the night a herd of rhinoceroses and some elephants crossed our path, and shortly afterwards we came to a glade called Tamasanka, containing some pools that never dry up. The water in them was clear, but Westbeech told me that if kept in a vessel for two or three days it always begins to thicken. I had no opportunity of proving the fact for myself.
In the afternoon I for the first time saw a widow-bird (Vidua paradisea), a species of finch which is very common on the west coast; I also found fly-catchers, pyroles, small speckled-green woodpeckers, and the Vidua regia. As a general rule birds abounded more in the open parts of the pool plateau than in the densely wooded district where the ponds lay in small glades.
For the two succeeding days the track was so thickly overgrown with grass that we had some difficulty in determining our proper route. The servants, in investigating the path, were highly delighted at finding the half-eaten carcase of a giraffe that had probably been killed by lions.
On the 16th we came to a region which is almost a precise counterpart of the Maque plain, being covered with mapani-trees and abounding in pools full of fish. The natives call it the Libanani, and it forms the south-eastern extremity of the plateau. It now belongs to the eastern Bamangwatos and the Matabele; but in Moselikatze’s time it belonged exclusively to the Matabele, being the most westerly part of their territory; its outlying parts, however,
