“_June 17th._--Fine morning, after a mild starry night; warm day. Inspanned at 6.20 A.M. I rode across the veldt to the right; grass very wet. Saw a small buck and three sassaybi, but they got my scent. Going in a direction generally north, I struck a deep sandy river, with plenty of water-holes in it, and banks steep and rocky in places; crossed it, and kept down it till I found the waggons, which had crossed it and outspanned perhaps a mile and a half further down. Just before reaching the waggons (8.20 A.M.), I came to a most singular building, built on a little isolated kopje in the midst of the level tree-studded veldt, but with other kopjes near. There has been an excellently-built wall running round the sides of the kopje, and a regular entrance into it. The boys say it was built in old times by the ancestors of the present race of Makalakas, and was the king’s residence. No white man, they say, helped to build it. It is not seen from the waggon-road. [Illustration: NATIVE BUILDING, SHASHE RIVER.] “The river, which we outspanned at, and which (as before stated) contains plenty of water, flows away towards the south-west, as shown by the bent reeds in its now dry sandy bed.[43] “Started again at 1.20 P.M. and went about eight miles; first through ‘mopani veldt,’ with fine fruit-trees in it, and a little before outspanning passed through a range of low kopjes. This ‘mopani’ is usually very heavy land, so called from the mopani trees (not unlike alders) which grow upon it. Of the fruit-trees referred to, one was my old glutinous friend of the Gwailo hunting veldt--plentiful, but not yet ripe. It is very woody, but when chewed exudes a fine glutinous gum. Another has a small fruit like a little rosy-cheeked apple, containing seeds, and something of the crab nature, but not at all acid. Another, which I should say was also of the apple kind, and like the last in taste and texture, was as large as a plum and of the same colour, and grew on a thick low bushy large-leaved tree. “In the evening, where we were outspanned, I found a large colony of birds established in three large nests (half-built, I think) in the branch of a tall tree. This is the noisy familiar bird I first met with at Tati.”[44]