The Ford Was Waist-Deep,
And Very Difficult, From The Masses Of Arum And Rushes
Through Which We Waded.
Going to the eastward about three miles,
we came to the Southern Lotembwa itself, running in a valley two miles broad.
It is here eighty or ninety yards wide, and contains numerous islands
covered with dense sylvan vegetation.
In the rainy season the valley
is flooded, and as the waters dry up great multitudes of fish are caught.
This happens very extensively over the country, and fishing-weirs are met with
every where. A species of small fish, about the size of the minnow,
is caught in bagfuls and dried in the sun. The taste is a pungent
aromatic bitter, and it was partaken of freely by my people, although they
had never met with it before. On many of the paths which had been flooded
a nasty sort of slime of decayed vegetable matter is left behind,
and much sickness prevails during the drying up of the water.
We did not find our friend Mozinkwa at his pleasant home on the Lokaloeje;
his wife was dead, and he had removed elsewhere. He followed us
some distance, but our reappearance seemed to stir up his sorrows.
We found the pontoon at the village in which we left it.
It had been carefully preserved, but a mouse had eaten a hole in it
and rendered it useless.
We traversed the extended plain on the north bank of the Leeba,
and crossed this river a little farther on at Kanyonke's village,
which is about twenty miles west of the Peri hills, our former ford.
The first stage beyond the Leeba was at the rivulet Loamba,
by the village of Chebende, nephew of Shinte; and next day
we met Chebende himself returning from the funeral of Samoana, his father.
He was thin and haggard-looking compared to what he had been before,
the probable effect of the orgies in which he had been engaged.
Pitsane and Mohorisi, having concocted the project of a Makololo village
on the banks of the Leeba, as an approach to the white man's market,
spoke to Chebende, as an influential man, on the subject,
but he cautiously avoided expressing an opinion.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 719 of 1070
Words from 205969 to 206340
of 306638
