Dr. Jameson was still very anxious to enter into communication with Lobengula, whose whereabouts was unknown. There could be no secured peace until he had come to terms. Several natives whom the Administrator had sent with messages to the King failed to reach him; they came back and confessed that when they had fallen in with raiding parties of young warriors from the King’s force they had been afraid to go further, lest they should be put to death as spies of the white men. As native messengers, not unnaturally, shirked the duty, it became apparent that Lobengula could only be approached by some white man who happened to be a _persona grata_ to the King, and who was willing to undertake the perilous adventure. Mr. James Dawson--a Scotchman, who had for some years been residing in Buluwayo as a trader, respected by both white and black, a man possessed of the tact so necessary to one negotiating with suspicious savages, and whose relations with the King had always been most friendly--now pluckily volunteered to go to the King himself and deliver Dr. Jameson’s message. He accordingly set out with a Scotch cart on February the 4th, 1894, accompanied by one other brave white man, Mr. Patrick Riley, also an old resident in Matabeleland and a friend of Lobengula’s. We waited anxiously until March the 7th, on which day Messrs. Dawson and Riley, having successfully accomplished the objects of their hazardous mission, returned to Inyati. As it came in there were signs to show that the party had had a very rough journey. The Scotch cart, dilapidated, its tent-cover torn by the thorny bush, was slowly drawn towards the camp by weary oxen; while the natives, who had set out from here thirty-two days before, active, well-nourished, and cheerful, now painfully crawled along with a miserable air, lean, haggard, their wasted limbs aching with the fever of the pestilential region they had traversed.