Marie's letter had said that they were encamped on the bank of the Crocodile River, about fifty miles from Delagoa Bay.

I asked everyone I met among the Portuguese--who, after all, were not many--if they had heard of such an encampment of emigrant Boers.

But these Portuguese appeared to have heard nothing, except my host, Don Jose, who had a vague recollection of something--he could not remember what.
The fact was at this time the few people who lived at Lorenzo Marquez were too sodden with liquor and other vices to take any interest in outside news that did not immediately concern them.

Moreover, the natives whom they flogged and oppressed if they were their servants, or fought with if they were not, told them little, and almost nothing that was true, for between the two races there was an hereditary hate stretching back for generations.

So from the Portuguese I gained no information.
Then I turned to the Kaffirs, especially to those from whom I had bought the cattle.