A little before the latter’s departure Frank Oates had chanced to hear from him that, at a spot not far from their encampment, some miles up the river, a number of Bushmen had been murdered the previous year, and he resolved, if possible, to visit the place, that he might obtain some of their remains. In this search his informant had undertaken to accompany him, and had even sent to Tati for a reliable guide to the spot, when suddenly, at the last moment, he changed his mind, and excused himself from going upon the plea of illness. The circumstances of his defection and some other incidents of the day are thus related in the traveller’s Journal:-- “_February 18th._--Fine day; the first day without rain for an age. Last night Klaas (the Hottentot) told me he was going on to Tati to-day, being too unwell to accompany me in my excursion in quest of the bones, but would leave me his two Bushmen--the one he had sent for from Tati, who knew the place, and the one he has had with him here. The former was out hunting, when his fourteen companions--men, women, and children--were killed at their hunting kraal by the Matabele. He found them all dead on his return. It seems that they were a party of Mungwato Bushmen, and some of them had taken meat belonging to some Bushmen from Manyami’s. The latter complained to the king, who said the Mungwato Bushmen were to be killed. This was last winter. This morning Klaas went away, leaving the two boys. I now found he was _going away to hunt_. Jacobs had sent for him to hunt for elephants, said to be on the Shashe. Presently the two Bushmen took their guns and skins and walked off. I immediately felt the strongest suspicion, and called Lee’s attention to them. He questioned them, and they told him they were going to hunt. I felt very uneasy, and wanted him to stop them, but he seemed to think it was all right. However, they did not return at night. We think Klaas had arranged all this.... One of Smith’s boys, a Matabele, was one of the party who killed the Bushmen, but he says he thinks he could not find the place, the leaves being now on the trees. He could find it, he says, going from his own kraal, but not from here. He evidently, however, does not want, or care, to go. It is somewhere, a day or a day and a half’s walk off, up the Ramaqueban.” The two Bushmen, as Frank Oates had anticipated, failing after this to reappear, the search for the remains had now for the present to be abandoned, but later in the year, as will presently be seen, he succeeded in obtaining possession of them.