hearing it. This happened at midday, and so did another at what is
called the Great Chuai, which was visible in its descent, and was also
accompanied with a thundering noise. The third fell near Kuruman, and
at night, and was seen as a falling star by people at Motito and at
Daniel's Kuil, places distant forty miles on opposite sides of the
spot. It sounded to me like the report of a great gun, and a few seconds
after, a lesser sound, as if striking the earth after a rebound. Does
the passage of a few such aerolites through the atmosphere to the earth
by day cause thunder without clouds?

We were detained here so long that my tent became again quite rotten.
One of my men, after long sickness, which I did not understand, died
here. He was one of the Batoka, and when unable to walk I had some
difficulty in making his companions carry him. They wished to leave
him to die when his case became hopeless. Another of them deserted to
Mozinkwa. He said that his motive for doing so was that the Makololo
had killed both his father and mother, and, as he had neither wife nor
child, there was no reason why he should continue longer with them. I
did not object to his statements, but said if he should change his mind
he would be welcome to rejoin us, and intimated to Mozinkwa that he must
not be sold as a slave. We are now among people inured to slave-dealing.
We were visited by men who had been as far as Tete or Nyungwe, and were
told that we were but ten days from that fort. One of them, a Mashona
man, who had come from a great distance to the southwest, was anxious to
accompany us to the country of the white men; he had traveled far, and
I found that he had also knowledge of the English tribe, and of their
hatred to the trade in slaves. He told Sekwebu that the "English
were men", an emphasis being put upon the term MEN, which leaves the
impression that others are, as they express it in speaking scornfully,
"only THINGS". Several spoke in the same manner, and I found that from
Mpende's downward I rose higher every day in the estimation of my own
people. Even the slaves gave a very high character to the English, and
I found out afterward that, when I was first reported at Tete, the
servants of my friend the commandant said to him in joke, "Ah! this is
our brother who is coming; we shall all leave you and go with him." We
had still, however, some difficulties in store for us before reaching
that point.

The man who wished to accomp