“I arrived here with Buckley and Gilchrist about a week since, and shall probably make a start for Pretoria to-night. The spring has now commenced, and the grass is beginning to grow. There have been heavy thunderstorms, and the lightning is wonderful, never ceasing for a moment during the storms. The heat also is very great.... There has just been a row here. The old chief’s eldest son has left the place, and nearly the whole of Mungwato went with him. The chief himself, Sekomi, is still here, and often comes down to the waggons begging. He got quite drunk the other night, and tumbled under my waggon. We had to see him home. He thinks his son means to kill him. He himself killed two or three of his own brothers when he came to be chief, but his two eldest sons are both Christians, and Mackenzie thinks Sekomi is in no danger from them.... There are some nice flowers of the lily sort sprung up since the rain began, but very few flowers of other kinds yet. The rains, however, have only just commenced, and we shall have all the summer heat going down.” Again, from Pretoria, he writes on December 5th:-- “I got here on the 2d instant, and great was my delight on receiving letters from home--the first I have had since leaving Pietermaritzburg.... It seems quite strange to be in a civilized place again. It is very pretty here now, just the height of summer. We are indulging in fruit and vegetables, eggs and milk, to all of which we have long been strangers. The peaches are hardly ripe yet, but apricots are to be bought for a shilling a hundred.... In coming from Mungwato we had to stop a week at the Meriko, as the river was very high with the rains and we couldn’t cross. I had some thoughts of taking my waggon in pieces, and floating the things across on rafts, but the water kept subsiding, and at last we got over, the water only just taking the oxen off their feet. In dry weather there is hardly any water, but after the rains the river gets tremendously swollen, and there are very steep banks. Whilst waiting there Dawnay[14] came up with two waggons. He has been out two years, and been to the Victoria Falls. He says it would be worth walking from Durban to see them. He showed me some little sketches he had made, but said it was almost impossible to draw on account of the flies. The tsetse-fly, which kills everything except men, wild beasts, and donkeys, swarms there, and bites so furiously that your hands and face are puffed up in no time. He describes the scenery on the Zambesi as lovely. [Illustration: BOERS’ FARMS, CROCODILE RIVER.]