The Pitfalls Are Usually In Pairs,
With A Wall A Foot Thick Left Uncut Between The Ends Of Each,
So
That if the beast, when it feels its fore legs descending,
should try to save itself from going in altogether
By striding the hind legs,
he would spring forward and leap into the second with a force
which insures the fall of his whole body into the trap.
They are covered with great care. All the excavated earth is removed
to a distance, so as not to excite suspicion in the minds of the animals.
Reeds and grass are laid across the top; above this the sand is thrown,
and watered so as to appear exactly like the rest of the spot.
Some of our party plumped into these pitfalls more than once,
even when in search of them, in order to open them to prevent
the loss of our cattle. If an ox sees a hole, he carefully avoids it;
and old elephants have been known to precede the herd and whisk off
the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the way down to the water.
We have known instances in which the old among these sagacious animals
have actually lifted the young out of the trap.
The trees which adorn the banks are magnificent. Two enormous baobabs
(`Adansonia digitata'), or mowanas, grow near its confluence with the lake
where we took the observations for the latitude (20d 20' S.).
We were unable to ascertain the longitude of the lake,
as our watches were useless; it may be between 22 Deg. and 23 Deg. E.
The largest of the two baobabs was 76 feet in girth.
The palmyra appears here and there among trees not met with in the south.
The mokuchong, or moshoma, bears an edible fruit of indifferent quality,
but the tree itself would be a fine specimen of arboreal beauty
in any part of the world. The trunk is often converted into canoes.
The motsouri, which bears a pink plum containing a pleasant acid juice,
resembles an orange-tree in its dark evergreen foliage, and a cypress
in its form. It was now winter-time, and we saw nothing of the flora.
The plants and bushes were dry; but wild indigo abounded, as indeed it does
over large tracts of Africa. It is called mohetolo, or the "changer",
by the boys, who dye their ornaments of straw with the juice.
There are two kinds of cotton in the country, and the Mashona,
who convert it into cloth, dye it blue with this plant.
We found the elephants in prodigious numbers on the southern bank.
They come to drink by night, and after having slaked their thirst -
in doing which they throw large quantities of water over themselves,
and are heard, while enjoying the refreshment, screaming with delight -
they evince their horror of pitfalls by setting off in a straight line
to the desert, and never diverge till they are eight or ten miles off.
They are smaller here than in the countries farther south.
At the Limpopo, for instance, they are upward of twelve feet high;
here, only eleven:
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