On this journey the officers encountered the celebrated King Khama, and it interested B.-P.

to find that Khama knew him as the brother of Sir George Baden-Powell, and that he inquired after Sir George's little girl, just as a lady in the Park asks if one's baby has got over the measles.

This (if we leave out a dinner at a wayside "hotel," where the waiter smoked as he served our officers) was the one picturesque incident of that jolting, clattering drive of nearly 560 miles, and, therefore, while our hero is groaning in the coach or travelling afield after partridges and guinea-fowl for dinner, we will take leave to look hastily for the reason of his presence in South Africa.
Matabeleland, let us say at the beginning, is included in Rhodesia, a country 750,000 miles in extent, or, so that the size may jump to the eye, let us say as big as France, Italy, and Spain lumped together.
This vast country was under the administration of the British Government, but the Matabele, who had been but partially beaten in the taking of their country in 1893, were only waiting their opportunity to throw off the white man's yoke.

The opportunity came when the deplorable Jameson raid emptied the country of troops, and left our brave hard-working colonists at the mercy of these savages.

But there were other causes contributory to the rebellion.