Advancing together the following morning, the three stopped for a day or two’s hunting a few miles further on, beyond the river. Here buffalo and blue wildebeest were met with, and the spoor of ostriches was seen. From a fine rocky plateau in the neighbourhood a good survey of the surrounding district was obtained. “Looking to the south-west,” writes the traveller, “we saw the distant conical range of the Tati hills, between which and ourselves lay a fine green bush-covered plain, through which flow the Impakwe and Ramaqueban Rivers. This plain extends far to the west and north, but to the north-east is again broken by kopjes in the direction of the Mangwe, whilst the fine craggy hills of the Inkwesi rise nearer in the same direction.” Some delicious fruits, not unlike greengages, known by the natives as “marula,” were picked up about here on the march. Between the skin and the large stone in the centre of each was a sweet liquid with scarcely any pulp. “We also found,” adds the writer, “a number of berries, of which we ate a good lot. These grow on low bushes, which have a sweet-scented yellow flower, with a smell like that of sallow bloom. The fruit is reddish-brown, about the size of a haw; dry, sweet, and containing a stone. It is called ‘Kafir plum.’” Here too a hornbill’s nest was found. “The boys,” says Frank Oates, “brought me a young hornbill, and I was taken to the nest. A hollow tree, with a hole in it, high up, was where the bird had come from. They poked out and pulled the wing-feathers off the old hen when I was not looking. I kept both birds. Karl says the old hen never leaves the young, the cock feeding them all, and that she gets quite bare of feathers. The number of young is two. The natives, he says, are very fond of them to eat, roasted.” [Illustration: AFRICAN GREY HORNBILL.--_Tockus nasutus._] The party next moved forward (February 12th) to the Impakwe, a further distance of about six miles. “Here,” writes the traveller, “is some distinct stone-work forming a circular wall, inside which are remains of bricks coated with a substance as if smelting had been done here. No mortar has been used, and the work is rough and I should say of no great antiquity, the stones being small and loose and easily displaced, so that I think they would not stand any great length of time. They are cut in an oblong form and properly placed for building. Karl says it was made for smelting copper, and used by the people whom Mosilikatze found here. That it is any older I should much doubt. “Shot here,” he concludes, “a beautiful sun-bird, whose beauty awoke my slumbering love of ornithology.” Birds had been scarce of late, but became much more plentiful at the Ramaqueban, which was reached the following morning. [Illustration: YELLOW-BILLED HORNBILL.--_Tockus flavirostris._]