This Is Stated On Native Testimony; But I Can Very Well
Believe That Level Plains, In Which Neither Wells Nor
Gullies are met with,
may, after the dry season, present the opposite extreme to what we witnessed.
Water, however, could
Always be got by digging, a proof of which we had
on our return when brought to a stand on this very plain by severe fever:
about twelve miles from the Kasai my men dug down a few feet,
and found an abundant supply; and we saw on one of the islands
the garden of a man who, in the dry season, had drunk water from a well
in like manner. Plains like these can not be inhabited
while the present system of cultivation lasts. The population is not yet
so very large as to need them. They find garden-ground enough
on the gentle slopes at the sides of the rivulets, and possess no cattle
to eat off the millions of acres of fine hay we were now wading through.
Any one who has visited the Cape Colony will understand me
when I say that these immense crops resemble sown grasses
more than the tufty vegetation of the south.
I would here request the particular attention of the reader to the phenomena
these periodically deluged plains present, because they have a most important
bearing on the physical geography of a very large portion of this country.
The plains of Lobale, to the west of this, give rise to a great many streams,
which unite, and form the deep, never-failing Chobe.
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