“_October 20th._ “Last night my two Kafirs, whom I had sent to the king, to ask leave for me to hunt a little on the Shashani, returned with a favourable answer. I gave the king a shot gun on first entering his country, much to his satisfaction, and I believe it is now his favourite gun out of the armoury he possesses. I had two cases of 200 cartridges each, and gave him one with the gun, and shall now leave the other, together with the rest of his present, with Brown, to be forwarded to him when a waggon goes up. It is everything here to have the king on one’s side, as without it one would have a miserable chance of getting on. Even the king does not care to have too many white men in his country, but likes a few, to enable him to trade. He has a great objection to the Boers, who come only to hunt for skins, thus wasting all the meat, but he knows with me it is a different case, and he does not care where I go, as long as I keep him in good humour by giving him presents. He never objects to people who are in the country hunting for meat. However, he is down on you if he sees any ostrich egg-shells lying on the breakfast-table, and asks how you can expect to get feathers if you eat the eggs. He is also very sensible in his denunciation of killing cow and young elephants, the ivory of which is scarcely worth taking. The Boers, wherever they go, shoot everything, big or little, on the principle that all’s fish that comes to the net. “We have just had a heavy shower, and there was one last night; in fact the rainy season is setting in. Rain is very much wanted, and all the livestock requires fresh grass.” Amongst the letters, twice alluded to above, which Frank Oates had found awaiting him at Tati, was one from his brother William, who was just about to start at the time he wrote (in the June previous) on a three months’ yachting trip to Spitzbergen; after his return from which he contemplated again coming out to Natal, early in the following year, there to rejoin his brother on his way back from the Zambesi, and accompany him--if he cared to go--on a short hunting expedition in Zululand, or, going north as far as Zanzibar, strike inland with him thence instead. To this proposal Frank Oates replied as follows:-- “TATI, _October 27th, 1874_. “I have been delighted to get your letters, and to find there is a chance of our uniting our forces once more. When you wrote of coming out to me I was both pleased and sorry--sorry, because I thought it would be best for me to return home when I reached the coast, and yet, if you had actually met me there, I could not have resisted the temptation of setting off again with you.