“It is quite a pleasure to get a letter from you--I mean the one you left for me here. I shall get no more now for five or six weeks, when I expect to be in Mungwato. I am sorry that wretched old croaker, Palmer,[36] put you in a funk about me. He says it would be a good thing for people travelling to have ‘portable coffins.’ I am thankful to say my health is excellent. I did not, as doubtless you know by this time, get to the Zambesi. I believe the king was at the bottom of it (not of the Zambesi; but excuse grammar). I took my waggon fifty miles on the way, as far as Inyati, and then put all out for fifteen carriers to take. It was a fortnight’s walk through ‘the fly’ to the Falls. After waiting nearly a week, it transpired that no boys were forthcoming as promised. Partly, I think, they were afraid of fever, and partly of the natives, with whom they are at war; partly also they wanted to get back in time to cultivate their gardens. However, I believe I could have got them myself easily, had I not trusted to the man given me by the king. “I then sent back to Lobengula, asking him for hunting veldt. I had given him your shot gun, and his sister some furniture print of gorgeous pattern. He gave me a fine veldt between the Gwailo and Umvungu Rivers, where I was six weeks. I then returned to the royal residence, and asked the king to let me go back to the same place. He was very crusty, and asked if I wanted to die. I told him I would take my chance, for I did not think there was the least danger _then_. It is when the rains cease and the rank vegetation rots beneath the sun that it is so bad, and that is not till March in most parts, I believe, though earlier on the Zambesi. However, he said, if I wanted to die, why could I not die somewhere else, and not in his country, and made so many difficulties I had to give it up. I then had so many delays--bad weather, and one thing or another--that I waited till the big dance was over, which is quite a thing to see when one is here. “After this I had difficulties with my men, and had to part with Hendrik, Dick, and Jacob, all of whom you will remember. About Dick’s dismissal I had to wait a week or more, as the case had to be tried before the king, and Jacob was finally handed over to the tender mercies of Dick. Hendrik I dismissed for refusing to cut some bushes, to make a fence round my waggon to keep the niggers out. This he considered ‘slavish work,’ and preferred dismissal to demeaning himself. Then the king would insist on buying my little horse, still well when I left in January, and got the saddle and bridle for nothing. [Illustration: HUNTERS’ CAMP ON THE SEMOKWE RIVER.]