“After this I sent off my driver with a span of oxen, to take the broken wheel on a sledge of boughs to Tati, and wrote to Brown asking him to send me a waggon, if possible, to bring me out, and a spare wheel also for my own waggon; or, if not, to get the wheel I sent him mended for me. The oxen that I still had left had to go many miles for water every day. The mare and the goats had nothing but filthy water to drink from holes dug in the ground. For my own use I got water from the pits, where the people dig for it, for I was in the midst of the Makalakas. I myself was a prisoner in my own kraal, for I dared not leave the waggon. I had with me three of my Matabele slave-boys and one Bushman. We got on pretty well for a few days, but soon the people began to drive my boys from the water, which they claimed the right to, having made the pits. This was the water for my own use, and it appeared also that the water at which their own goats drank was denied to mine, and they and my mare driven away from it. I sent for the induna, an old Makalaka, with whom I had hitherto refused to speak in consequence of his having stopped me the first time I tried to go through. I gave him a present of ammunition on condition of his allowing my boys to get water; and, after promising to see that all was right, he asked for more presents, which I refused, and the boys were driven away just as much as they had been before. All I could do was to buy water for my own use of the women, who brought it every morning, and to hope that the animals managed to get a little now and then. I had also had a disagreement with the people about some goats which I had bought for a gun. The day after I bought them the gun had been brought back and the goats demanded, which I refused to give up, threatening to shoot any one who touched them. However, as soon as they went out to feed, the goats were seized, as I fully expected they would be, but the gun had been left. After this I refused to trade any more, and drove all the people away except those who brought water.