On The 3d Of November We Bade Adieu To Our Friends At Linyanti, Accompanied By
Sekeletu And About 200 Followers.
We were all fed at his expense,
and he took cattle for this purpose from every station we came to.
The principal men of the Makololo, Lebeole, Ntlarie, Nkwatlele, etc.,
were also of the party.
We passed through the patch of the tsetse,
which exists between Linyanti and Sesheke, by night.
The majority of the company went on by daylight, in order to prepare our beds.
Sekeletu and I, with about forty young men, waited outside the tsetse
till dark. We then went forward, and about ten o'clock it became
so pitchy dark that both horses and men were completely blinded.
The lightning spread over the sky, forming eight or ten branches at a time,
in shape exactly like those of a tree. This, with great volumes
of sheet-lightning, enabled us at times to see the whole country.
The intervals between the flashes were so densely dark as to convey
the idea of stone-blindness. The horses trembled, cried out,
and turned round, as if searching for each other, and every new flash
revealed the men taking different directions, laughing, and stumbling
against each other. The thunder was of that tremendously loud kind
only to be heard in tropical countries, and which friends from India
have assured me is louder in Africa than any they have ever heard elsewhere.
Then came a pelting rain, which completed our confusion.
After the intense heat of the day, we soon felt miserably cold,
and turned aside to a fire we saw in the distance.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 768 of 1070
Words from 220466 to 220737
of 306638
