These Are Generally
Covered With Wild Date-Trees And Palmyras, And In Some Parts
There Are Forests Of Mimosae And Mopane.
Occasionally the country
between the Chobe and Zambesi is flooded, and there are
large patches of swamps lying near the Chobe or on its banks.
The Makololo were living among these swamps for the sake of the protection
the deep reedy rivers afforded them against their enemies.
Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement for myself,
I could not conscientiously ask them to abandon their defenses
for my convenience alone. The healthy districts were defenseless,
and the safe localities were so deleterious to human life,
that the original Basutos had nearly all been cut off by the fever;
I therefore feared to subject my family to the scourge.
As we were the very first white men the inhabitants had ever seen,
we were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first who came to see us
was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico.
Many of the Makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red baize,
and also of printed cottons; on inquiry, we learned that these
had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari,
which is situated near Bihe. This tribe began the slave-trade
with Sebituane only in 1850, and but for the unwillingness of Lechulatebe
to allow us to pass, we should have been with Sebituane in time to have
prevented it from commencing at all.
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