The Absence Of Both These Rhinoceroses
Among The Reticulated Rivers In The Central Valley May Easily
Be Accounted For, They
Would be such an easy prey to the natives
in their canoes at the periods of inundation; but one can
Not so readily
account for the total absence of the giraffe and ostrich
on the high open lands of the Batoka, north of the Zambesi,
unless we give credence to the native report which bounds the country
still farther north by another network of waters near Lake Shuia,
and suppose that it also prevented their progress southward.
The Batoka have no name for the giraffe or the ostrich in their language;
yet, as the former exists in considerable numbers in the angle formed
by the Leeambye and Chobe, they may have come from the north
along the western ridge. The Chobe would seem to have been too narrow to act
as an obstacle to the giraffe, supposing it to have come into that district
from the south; but the broad river into which that stream flows
seems always to have presented an impassable barrier to both
the giraffe and the ostrich, though they abound on its southern border,
both in the Kalahari Desert and the country of Mashona.
We passed through large tracts of Mopane country, and my men caught
a great many of the birds called Korwe (`Tockus erythrorhynchus')
in their breeding-places, which were in holes in the mopane-trees.
On the 19th we passed the nest of a korwe just ready for the female to enter;
the orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left
of a heart shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body.
The hole in the tree was in every case found to be prolonged
some distance upward above the opening, and thither the korwe always fled
to escape being caught.
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