“At last I have your and the Mater’s letters, dated September 22d, and containing the first news I have had from home since I left Pietermaritzburg. When I arrived here and found no letters I did not know what to think. Mr. Mackenzie, the missionary, and his assistant, Mr. Hepburn, were both absent, having gone--as well as Mr. Thomson, the Matabele missionary--to a meeting at Kuruman. I had asked Mackenzie to keep letters for me at his own house, and requested Hathorn to forward all letters to him from Maritzburg; so when I arrived here and found none I could not make it out. To-day, however, a note arrived, the monthly mail coming in. This note was from Hepburn, telling me that a letter and newspapers were at his house for me, and directing me to apply to a converted native, who is studying for the church, and who, with others like him, forms a college adjoining the missionary houses. I was not long in going up, and found the things as he had said, amongst his books.... “I left Tati for this place on the 4th of April, and reached here in a week. I had to come here for supplies. It is about 150 miles; but the journey is no trifle. I generally trekked during the night, and slept comfortably, the ground being soft sand for the most part, and the waggon going slowly and without jolts. We usually made two treks of perhaps three hours each, say from 3 to 6, and from 8 to 11 P.M., and set off again about 2 A.M. and trekked till sunrise, which was about 6 A.M., making a trek of about four hours. Call our rate of travelling two miles an hour in heavy ground, this gives about twenty miles a day, roughly, and this is good trekking, and could not be kept up for long. Now, however, there is still plenty of grass and water, though winter is setting in and the rains nearly over. Two waggons accompanied me, with two traders and a hunter in them. The latter is quite a young fellow, who left England three years ago. He was educated at Rugby. One of the two traders was Fairbairn, who supplied me with goods at the town of the Matabele king; and the other, a man named Dawson. “On my birthday I thought of you all, and old times--and had a good wash.[40]... I hope not to be more than a week or so here in all, before returning to Tati, _en route_ for the Falls. Selous, the hunting youth above mentioned, set off to-day. His partner, George Wood, a Yorkshireman, is waiting for him at Tati. They are both professional ivory hunters, and have a good deal of roughing it to do. Selous was once lost for four days and three nights in the veldt. The morning of the first day, when he left the waggons, he had nothing but a cup of coffee, and had neither a drop of water nor a morsel of food of any description till the evening of the fourth day, when he found his way back, and got some milk of a native. He thinks he could have held out another day.