“The only pleasant part of the day is from sunrise (about half-past six) to half-past eight. After that, the less you do the better until 5 P.M., when it is moderately cool again. At half-past six it is dark. The flies are a perfect plague all day, and get into everything. Towards the end of October there are some heavy thunder showers, and then summer begins, but the regular rains don’t fall until November. There are great numbers of hyænas and jackals, which prowl about the waggons all night. Last night one of Buckley’s oxen was ill, and the hyænas knowing it attacked him, and this morning we found they had actually eaten part of him alive. Of course the poor brute had to be shot. Unfortunately the hyæna escaped, though fired at by Buckley’s driver. The people are very glad when anybody shoots these animals, as they are constantly killing goats, and sometimes oxen. They are, however, so wary, that it is difficult to get them. “Mr. Nelson, the manager of the mine, lent us some newspapers up to the 24th of May, the latest news we have seen from England. He also sent me a small bottle of beer, worth about five shillings here. Nelson is getting the king, Lobengula, some furniture from England, as he told the latter that a king ought not to sit on the ground. Lobengula’s country extends from here to the Zambesi, and he is an absolute despot, having the lives of all his people in his own hands. They say if one of the Matabele is found stealing from a white man he has him executed.” Soon after writing the above, W. E. Oates left Tati in company with Messrs. Gilchrist and Buckley, to hunt on the Semokwe River, where they had very good sport. Returning thence in due time to the coast, they took the same route as that by which they had travelled north, the change of season, however, from winter to summer producing, as they returned, a remarkable change in the entire aspect of the country. By the end of October they were back at Bamangwato, and reached Pietermaritzburg on the 2d of January. A few extracts from W. E. Oates’s letters, written as they proceeded, may here be read with interest. He writes first from Bamangwato on November 3d as follows:--