“Standing about are many pretty girls in most fantastic head-dresses, worn only on special occasions, and highly prized. Predominant is the pink bead, appropriated by the royal family. A small group of waggon-drivers, either those who have come up here with white men, or who belong to the doctor’s party, whose waggons accompany the king in all his movements, are dressed to the height of fashion--as near as they can manage it--in European dress, for which the stores of the place have been ransacked, and high prices paid, no matter at what sacrifice. One has a chimney-pot. These fellows are usually the greatest scamps in the country--idle, vain, insolent, and vicious. The king is dressed much like his warriors, and looks himself. He is a fine-looking man, and has an agreeable expression and a ready smile. He is one of the darkest-complexioned people I have seen belonging to this nation. “Now Thomson tells me we must make haste and return to the waggon, as the soldiers are beginning to march out, and they are all going outside, accompanied by the king and his court. We return, and the troops march out and take up position in a huge, dense circle outside the kraal. There may be three, four, or even five thousand of them, and perhaps ten thousand people in all.”[30] “_January 9th._--Hot day; short heavy shower in the afternoon. Dancing at the kraal--second day (or was Wednesday also a day? If so, this is the third). Different parties dancing; majachas and girls separately, though in some cases girls are introduced into the majachas’ dance. King had waggon taken out by Kafirs. Selous[31] looked at my guns. Rain came on, and he sat in my tent. He tells me how he was once lost between Bamangwato and Tati for four days. He had had a cup of coffee, and gone out hunting. That night he slept in the veldt; it was July, and the nights were very cold. He had only a shirt and trousers on, and had no matches. He used his last three cartridges in trying to make a fire. The second and third days he still wandered. I think it was the end of the second day that he lost his horse. The evening of the fourth day he came to Palatswe water, and got milk of a Kafir. He walked back next day to his waggon at Tchagani pool--he thinks about twenty miles. It was on the evening of the third day he reached a hill, by moonlight, whence he saw other hills he knew. Started before daybreak, and that night got the milk. He thinks he could have gone another day without food or water. He had nothing whatever, between the coffee, at starting, and the milk. He carried his gun, perspired profusely, and suffered much from cold at nights. He experienced a difficulty in swallowing. “A letter from Mandy, at Inyati, to-day, states that he saw a crocodile there the other day, which got hold of his dog, and pursued himself in his bathing hole. It was ten or twelve feet long, he says.