He Had Promised To Show Us His Country
And To Select A Suitable Locality For Our Residence.
We had now
to look to the daughter, who was living twelve days to the north, at Naliele.
We were obliged, therefore, to remain until a message came from her;
and when it did, she gave us perfect liberty to visit any part of the country
we chose.
Mr. Oswell and I then proceeded one hundred and thirty miles
to the northeast, to Sesheke; and in the end of June, 1851, we were rewarded
by the discovery of the Zambesi, in the centre of the continent.
This was a most important point, for that river was not previously known
to exist there at all. The Portuguese maps all represent it
as rising far to the east of where we now were; and if ever any thing
like a chain of trading stations had existed across the country between
the latitudes 12 Deg. and 18 Deg. south, this magnificent portion of the river
must have been known before. We saw it at the end of the dry season,
at the time when the river is about at its lowest, and yet there was
a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred yards of deep flowing water.
Mr. Oswell said he had never seen such a fine river, even in India.
At the period of its annual inundation it rises fully twenty feet
in perpendicular height, and floods fifteen or twenty miles of lands
adjacent to its banks.
The country over which we had traveled from the Chobe was perfectly flat,
except where there were large ant-hills, or the remains of former ones,
which had left mounds a few feet high. These are generally
covered with wild date-trees and palmyras, and in some parts
there are forests of mimosae and mopane. Occasionally the country
between the Chobe and Zambesi is flooded, and there are
large patches of swamps lying near the Chobe or on its banks.
The Makololo were living among these swamps for the sake of the protection
the deep reedy rivers afforded them against their enemies.
Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement for myself,
I could not conscientiously ask them to abandon their defenses
for my convenience alone. The healthy districts were defenseless,
and the safe localities were so deleterious to human life,
that the original Basutos had nearly all been cut off by the fever;
I therefore feared to subject my family to the scourge.
As we were the very first white men the inhabitants had ever seen,
we were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first who came to see us
was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico.
Many of the Makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red baize,
and also of printed cottons; on inquiry, we learned that these
had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari,
which is situated near Bihe.
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