buried. He had been hunting in the district, and had taken fever and died. His death had really occurred in the Makalaka country, but it was necessary to bring him to be buried at the frontier. His brother, Mr. William Oates, in 1874 erected a grave-stone over the spot.
We had two small streams to cross before we came to the Mathiutse, which crossed our path transversely. During the last stage of our journey through Makalaka-land we had crossed no fewer than seventeen rain-streams, all of them flowing into the Maytengue, and yet forming, I believe, not more than a tenth part of the affluents of that river. The scenery was as fine as any I saw during my hurried journey through the country. The soil was chiefly granite, thickly veined with quartz, and in many places marked with dark slate-coloured mica, the strata being variously horizontal, vertical, or oblique, generally towards the top of the hills slanting downwards at an angle of seventy degrees to the south-west. I saw nothing more interesting than the picturesque masses of granite that crowned the slopes of the hills; so strange and fantastic were their forms that I could not resist entering them upon my chart with names corresponding to what seemed to be their shapes. One on the Matliutse I called “the cap;” another on the next spruit, “the two sparrows;” another, “ the club;” and a fourth, to the right of the road, the most striking of all, I named “the pyramid.” The scenery gave me some idea how charming the country must be in the highlands in the upper parts of the Matliutse, Shasha, Tati, and Rhamakoban, which are all of them affluents of the Limpopo.
