When I arrived at Umkano kraal on the 30th December, it was Sunday; when I had drawn up my waggon in a nice snug nook to be away from the native kraals, and outspanned, it was 4 p.m. Dinner was soon prepared and despatched, and then I sent my two warrior guards to the king to announce my arrival, and that I would call on his majesty to-morrow. A short distance from my camp, four waggons were drawn up abreast, no one to be seen, except a white lady sitting on the waggon-box of one of them. I therefore lost no time in going over, and found it was Mrs. Sykes, wife of the Rev. Mr. Sykes of Inyatine, who was then holding service in an adjoining hut to a few natives. The other waggons belonged to the Rev. Mr. Coillard of the French Missionary Society, in Basutoland, who had come up to Matabeleland to endeavour to found a few native mission stations; and instead of coming up by the main transport road and reporting himself in the usual way, he passed through the Transvaal, crossed the Limpopo at Zoutpans drift, and entered the Mashona country as it were by the back door, and as he travelled north, he was seen to pick a few flowers, which was reported to Lo-Bengulu, when he sent immediately eighty of his warriors to bring him and his belongings prisoners to this station, and he arrived the day previous to my arrival. This brought Mr. Sykes over from Inyatine to intercede and get him released, as also his waggons, wife, and wife's sister, who were accompanying him; a rather dangerous journey for two ladies, when the husband had never been in before and knew not the country, to go exploring unknown regions, and it was a great surprise to us all that they came out safe. When gaining all this information from Mrs. Sykes, the gentleman himself, his wife and sister came strolling in from a ramble, when we all made ourselves comfortable round Mrs. Sykes' waggon to enjoy a cup of tea, the most refreshing drink in a climate like this, thermometer standing at 92 degrees at six o'clock in the evening, and a cloudless sky. Mr. Sykes soon joined us after the conclusion of his service. When Europeans meet in a region so remote as this from civilisation, surrounded by savage tribes, naked as when they were born, and as wild as nature can make them, knowing no law but that of their king, who rules at the point of his assagai, we at once become brothers and sisters, and friendship is then and there established; so it was with us, chatting and talking as if we had been old and dear friends. It is true, I had known Mr. and Mrs. Sykes a long time, when I first met them in 1867, and afterwards. Having spent a pleasant evening listening to Mr. Coillard's account of his adventures through that wild region, I returned to waggon and to bed at 10 p.m.; a calm hot night, flies by the million, mosquitoes by the thousand round my waggon. At all Kaffir stations it is the same; the cattle kraals breed the flies, and the water the mosquitoes.