Still remaining at Tati a few days after their return there, Frank Oates, as already mentioned, started thence for Bamangwato on April 4th, accompanied by a hunter and two traders, also on their way south. By the middle of March the weather seemed to have become quite settled, and the days were almost universally fine and hot, with only an occasional slight shower or a little drizzling rain. This absence of wet had greatly changed the aspect of the country, and that in a short time, for, the day after leaving Tati for Bamangwato and crossing the Shashe River, the veldt presented to the travellers a dry, parched appearance, very different from anything which had now for a long time been witnessed. The grass was yellow, and many of the trees already bare. A week’s trekking brought the party to Bamangwato, which was reached on April 11th, after an uneventful journey.[39] [Illustration: SALT PAN, BAMANGWATO.] Here Frank Oates found letters awaiting him--the first he had received from England since leaving Pietermaritzburg nearly twelve months before--and, all seeming favourable, at once determined on prosecuting his journey to the Zambesi. There appeared now every reason to anticipate a prosperous and successful expedition, and he began at once to make his preparations for it, laying in fresh supplies at the stores, and otherwise completing his equipment. Very little worthy of note occurred during the time he was detained at Bamangwato. One evening, however, a great noise and shouting at the kraal, kept up till late, announced the return from the veldt of a number of boys who had been out for circumcision. The following day, according to custom, the same boys went forth again, and Frank Oates saw them starting. “Party, say of two hundred boys, went out,” he writes, “into the veldt. They are those who returned yesterday from circumcision, and I am told will have to go to the veldt every day for a week and look after the king’s cattle. They presented a striking and uniform appearance. Each had a knob-kerry and a wand, and round the middle a bit of skin. All these and their entire bodies were rubbed with red ochre, their heads shaved except the crown, on which the hair was quite short, crisp, and bead-like. All the crown and the part around it was brilliantly metallic, of a dark steel blue, produced by some preparation of a kind of lead got here.” [Illustration: CHURCH AND MISSION STATION, SHOSHONG, BAMANGWATO.] The evening after this occurrence (April 24th), the traveller’s preparations were completed, and a fresh start made up country, but before proceeding further with the narrative, it will be proper here to give quotations from some of the letters written during his present stay at Bamangwato. Five days after his arrival he writes to one of his brothers:-- “BAMANGWATO, _April 16th, 1874_.