Previously unpublished, Zambesi Patrol is an account of a patrol undertaken by Trooper John Hoddinott in 1928 in the Zambesi Valley to verify a report that smallpox was ravishing the area and, if so, to establish cordons to prevent the spread of the disease and to vaccinate the native population. Written in patrol diary style recording every day of a four month patrol it provides an insight into what was demanded of a BSAP Trooper in a wilderness area in those days. Far from his Station, his only communication with civilization being by native runners who took days to accomplish their journeys, with no medical assistance in an emergency, the trooper had to be self-sufficient and capable of taking in his stride everything that the bush could throw at him. Leaving Gokwe with three African staff and twenty-two carriers John Hoddinott trekked an estimated 1,500 miles wearing out four pairs of boots. Pack animals could not be used because of tsetse fly. He had encounters with wild animals, crossed the Zambesi River by dug out canoe, met African chiefs and overcame the problems involved with vaccinating hundreds of persons. Much of the territory he covered would later be inundated by the waters of the Kariba Dam.