y favour a little; for I obtained, by permission of the Admiralty, a
passage in the British screw steam-frigate Forte, under orders to convey
Admiral Sir H. Keppel to his command at the Cape; and Sir Charles Wood
most obligingly made a request that I should be forwarded thence
to Zanzibar in one of our slaver-hunting cruisers by the earliest
opportunity.

On the 27th April, Captain Grant and I embarked on board the new
steam-frigate Forte, commanded by Captain E. W. Turnour, at Portsmouth;
and after a long voyage, touching at Madeira and Rio de Janeiro, we
arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on the 4th July. Here Sir George Grey,
the Governor of the colony, who took a warm and enlightened interest in
the cause of the expedition, invited both Grant and myself to reside at
his house. Sir George had been an old explorer himself--was once wounded
by savages in Australia, much in the same manner as I had been in the
Somali country--and, with a spirit of sympathy, he called me his son,
and said he hoped I would succeed. Then, thinking how best he could
serve me, he induced the Cape Parliament to advance to the expedition
a sum of L300, for the purpose of buying baggage-mules; and induced
Lieut.-General Wynyard, the Commander-in-Chief, to detach ten volunteers
from the Cape Mounted Rifle Corps to accompany me. When this addition
was made to my force, of twelve mules and ten Hottentots, the Admiral of
the station placed the screw steam-corvette Brisk at my disposal, and we
all sailed for Zanzibar on the 16th July, under the command of Captain
A. F. de Horsey--the Admiral himself accompanying us, on one of his
annual inspections to visit the east coast of Africa and the Mauritius.
In five days more we touched at East London, and, thence proceeding
north, made a short stay at Delagoa Bay, where I first became acquainted
with the Zulu Kafirs, a naked set of negroes, whose national costume
principally consists in having their hair trussed up like a hoop on the
top of the head, and an appendage like a thimble, to which they attach
a mysterious importance. They wear additional ornaments, charms, &c., of
birds' claws, hoofs and horns of wild animals tied on with strings, and
sometimes an article like a kilt, made of loose strips of skin, or the
entire skins of vermin strung close together. These things I have merely
noticed in passing, because I shall hereafter have occasion to allude
to a migratory people, the Watuta, who dressing much i