This Incident May Give Some Idea Of The Serfdom Of The Subject Tribes, And,
Except That They Are Sometimes Punished For Running Away And Other Offenses,
I Can Add Nothing More By Way Of Showing The True Nature
Of This Form Of Servitude.
Leaving Naliele, amid abundance of good wishes for the success of
our expedition, and hopes that we might return accompanied with white traders,
we began again our ascent of the river.
It was now beginning to rise,
though the rains had but just commenced in the valley. The banks are low,
but cleanly cut, and seldom sloping. At low water they are from
four to eight feet high, and make the river always assume very much
the aspect of a canal. They are in some parts of whitish, tenacious clay,
with strata of black clay intermixed, and black loam in sand,
or pure sand stratified. As the river rises it is always wearing
to one side or the other, and is known to have cut across from one bend
to another, and to form new channels. As we coast along the shore,
pieces which are undermined often fall in with a splash like that caused
by the plunge of an alligator, and endanger the canoe.
These perpendicular banks afford building-places to a pretty bee-eater,*
which loves to breed in society. The face of the sand-bank is perforated
with hundreds of holes leading to their nests, each of which is about a foot
apart from the other; and as we pass they pour out of their hiding-places,
and float overhead.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 383 of 1070
Words from 109944 to 110209
of 306638
