If you think it unsafe to accompany me, don't come; I will get on as best I can alone, or with some other skilled person if I can find one." "If you put it like that I shall certainly come," I replied, "with the proviso that should the buffalo prove to be non-existent or the pursuit of them impossible, we either give up the trip, or go somewhere else, perhaps to the country at the back of Delagoa Bay." "Agreed," he said; after which we discussed terms, he paying me my salary in advance.
On further consideration we determined, as two were quite unnecessary for a trip of the sort, to leave one of my wagons and half the cattle in charge of a very respectable man, a farmer who lived about five miles from Pretoria just over the pass near to the famous Wonder-boom tree which is one of the sights of the place.

Should we need this wagon it could always be sent for; or, if we found the Lydenburg hunting-ground, which he was so set upon visiting, unproductive or impossible, we could return to Pretoria over the high-veld and pick it up before proceeding elsewhere.
These arrangements took us a couple of days or so.

On the third we started, without seeing you, my friend, or any one else that I knew, since just at that time every one seemed to be away from Pretoria.

You, I remember, had by now become the Master of the High Court and were, they informed me at your office, absent on circuit.
The morning of our departure was particularly lovely and we trekked away in the best of spirits, as so often happens to people who are marching into trouble.

Of our journey there is little to say as everything went smoothly, so that we arrived at the edge of the high-veld feeling as happy as the country which has no history is reported to do.