The Little Water To Be Had At This Time Of The Year, By
Digging In The Beds Of Dry Watercourses,
Was so brackish as to
increase thirst - some of the natives indeed were making salt from it;
and when at
Long intervals a less brackish supply was found, it was
nauseous and muddy from the frequent visits of large game. The
tsetse abounded. The country was level, and large tracts of it
covered with mopane forest, the leaves of which afford but scanty
shade to the baked earth, so that scarcely any grass grows upon it.
The sun was so hot, that the men frequently jumped from the path, in
the vain hope of cooling, for a moment, their scorched feet under the
almost shadeless bushes; and the native who carried the provision of
salt pork got lost, and came into Tette two days after the rest of
the party, with nothing but the fibre of the meat left, the fat,
melted by the blazing sun, having all run down his back. This path
was soon made a highway for slaving parties by Captain Raposo, the
Commandant. The journey nearly killed our two active young friends;
and what the slaves must have since suffered on it no one can
conceive; but slaving probably can never be conducted without
enormous suffering and loss of life.
Mankokwe now sent a message to say that he wished us to stop at his
village on our way down. He came on board on our arrival there with
a handsome present, and said that his young people had dissuaded him
from visiting us before; but now he was determined to see what every
one else was seeing.
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