As we journeyed eastwards the appearance of the people was certainly wilder. We here saw their heads decorated with curious erections of woven grass, fastened into their hair and reaching an elevation of a foot, like miniature Eiffel towers on their heads; [29] and at a village called Muchienda we acquired two quaint-shaped straw hats with ostrich feathers sticking in the top, quite different to anything we had seen elsewhere. As we approached this village a long string of natives passed us on their way to hunt; on their heads they carried bark cases full of nets, which they stretch across the valleys and drive the game into them. Muchienda was a lovely village by a rushing stream full of rocks, which formed a little waterfall; the stream was shaded by magnificent timber, and a background of lovely mountains made us think Muchienda an ideal spot, at which we would willingly have tarried longer. Every day, as we approached the Sabi Valley, the scenery became grander; the dreary high plateau gave place to deep valleys and high rugged mountains; the vegetation was much more luxuriant and the atmosphere many degrees hotter, so hot that during our midday halts we did not care to wander very far from our camp, especially as we had a good deal of manual labour to perform apart from the actual travelling, in tent pitching, bed making, and cooking, for our white men were generally so tired with driving and packing the donkeys that we could not ask them to do anything after the march was over. We soon got accustomed to sleeping on the ground. When it was unusually rugged, for the grass grows here in tufts like the hair on the niggers’ heads, we got grass cut on which to lay our rugs; occasionally we found it necessary to encamp on spots over which a grass fire had passed, and then we got hopelessly black, and lived like sweeps until we reached a stream, where we could wash ourselves and our clothes. Lutilo, with the village of Luti perched upon one of its lower precipices, is quite a grand mountain, almost Alpine in character, with exquisite views over the distant Sabi and Manica Mountains. Here we tarried for almost a whole day to visit an insignificant set of ruins a few miles distant, called Metemo, but which formed a link in the great chain of forts stretching northwards. It had been built in three circles of very rough stone, somewhat ingeniously put together on the top of a rounded granite hill, but hopelessly ruined. So we only tarried there a while to make a plan, and to rest, and enjoy the lovely view. The country around here is very thickly wooded, and on our return to our camp a herd of deer passed close to us, a species known to the Dutch as Swartvit-pens, or ‘swarthy white paunches,’ but we failed to get one, a matter of considerable regret from a commissariat point of view, for meat is scarce in the villages about here, and our tinned supplies were getting low.