Soon after his return from America in 1872 he began to make arrangements for a more extended journey--the one of which this volume treats, and on which he started in March 1873. His plan on this occasion was to reach the Zambesi from Natal, and if possible visit some of the unexplored country to the north of that river. In the latter hope he was destined to disappointment, and the number of obstacles he met with in realizing the former serve to illustrate some of the ordinary difficulties which may be encountered in African travel. Of the results, however, such as they were, of this journey, in which he lost his life, the reader must be left to form his own judgment from the perusal of the ensuing pages. He had at least acquired much of that needful experience of rough travel and adventure, without which little can be accomplished in the way of exploration or research. It is almost certain that, had he lived, his next journey would have been of a more ambitious kind, remarkable as he was for that love of enterprise which characterizes the true explorer; of this he spoke merely as a “little trip.” His experiences, moreover, in this two years’ travel, must still further have convinced him, if in a different manner, of those evil effects of attempting too many things, which his Oxford career had previously warned him of. The diversity of his pursuits led him into many delays, each one of which no doubt contributed its share, together with the obstructiveness of native tribes, to that long detention on his journey which finally threw his visit to the Zambesi into the unhealthy season of the year. It must be granted, however, at the same time, that his love of adventure led him into places where the field for inquiry was especially inviting, and offered exceptional advantages; and also that his devotion to natural history beguiled throughout his journey what might otherwise have proved many a weary march. It is more than probable--so fully had the need of this now been brought home to him--that on another journey, had he been spared to make one, he would have concentrated his chief energies upon fewer objects. What these might have been must remain, indeed, matter of conjecture; but whatever else he had abandoned, the pursuit of ornithology would certainly have held a place second only to that of exploration.