A delicious stream for bathing and washing clothes flowed a few yards below our camp, which gave us sufficient employment for what would otherwise have been an idle afternoon. At midnight our interpreter arrived, and the following morning we commenced our journey in real earnest. At a village where we halted for a while we were introduced to a young girl, who was shortly to become chief Kunzi’s eleventh wife—the state wife, to be presented to him by his tribe, whose son will be heir to the chiefdom, to the exclusion of the children by his other purchased wives. This marriage is usually recommended and seen to by the tribe when the chief is getting on towards middle life; and the succession in these parts is carried on in this way. She wore round her neck one of the large white whorls made out of the end of shells, which are common amongst the natives, but a specimen of which I tried ineffectually to get. This, I now learnt, is the sign of betrothal, and is transferred to the neck of the baby when born. Men also wear them for love philtres, and hence their reluctance to part with them. During this day’s march we passed by a pond dug in a hollow which was in process of drying up. These holes are dug by the natives in the dry season with the object of catching fish when the swamps dry up; also for fishing they make use of a thing very like our lobster-pot, which they tie to a fence across a rapid portion of the stream. The love the natives have for salt throughout this saltless country is very marked; for sugar and lollipops, which we offered them, they have a positive aversion; anything of a savoury nature pleases them immensely, and their gestures of delight over the scrapings of tins of anchovy paste were most pleasing to contemplate. Mice, locusts, and caterpillars are their daintiest viands, and if given a lump of salt they will put it straight-way into their mouths and consume it with the greatest complacency. We halted that night at the village of Yandoro, still in Kunzi’s country, with a solitary rock in its midst, divided into two parts by a narrow split forming a gully which is bridged over by trees, so that they can retire to the highest point when the Matabele come, and wait there till the impi has departed with their cattle and grain.