Matabele land and the Victoria Falls

"Matabele land and the Victoria Falls" by Frank Oates is a travel and natural history account written in the late 19th century. Compiled posthumously from a naturalist-explorer’s letters and journals, it traces an overland journey through the Transvaal and Matabeleland to the Zambesi and Victoria Falls, interweaving geography, wildlife, and encounters with local peoples. Readers can expect detailed field observations, maps from route surveys, and on-the-spot illustrations, shaped by an editor’s hand. The opening of the book presents an editor’s preface explaining that the narrative is pieced together from field notebooks and private letters, justifying publication, noting delays, and outlining added scientific appendices (ornithology, herpetology, entomology, botany) and maps based on the traveller’s observations. A memoir then sketches Oates’s lifelong passion for birds and natural history, his interrupted Oxford career, recovery and travels in the Americas, character traits of courage and gentleness, and the aims and risks of his South African expedition. The narrative proper begins with departure for Natal, outfitting at Pietermaritzburg, and a slow wagon journey via the high, treeless veldt (cold nights, burned grass) to Pretoria, then into the bush-veldt along the Crocodile River, where game and birdlife abound and Boers trade farm produce. Reaching Shoshong (Bamangwato), the party meets King Sekomi amid scarcity and locust-gathering, receives practical guidance from missionaries, and pushes on through sandy, water-stressed country past the Seruli and Gokwe with encounters among Bushmen hunters and abundant sand-grouse. After a dramatic episode in which a lion seizes an ox at the Shashe, the travellers arrive at the small Tati gold settlement; plans are set for Oates to proceed toward Lobengula’s town and, if possible, the Zambesi, while his brother turns aside for a shorter hunting excursion.