We Have Probably Nothing Equal To It In
The Present Quiet Operations Of Nature.
On emerging we pitched our camp by a small stream, the Pendele, a few
miles below the gorge.
The Palabi mountain stands on the western
side of the lower end of the Kariba strait; the range to which it
belongs crosses the river, and runs to the south-east. Chikumbula, a
hospitable old headman, under Nchomokela, the paramount chief of a
large district, whom we did not see, brought us next morning a great
basket of meal, and four fowls, with some beer, and a cake of salt,
"to make it taste good." Chikumbula said that the elephants plagued
them, by eating up the cotton-plants; but his people seem to be well
off.
A few days before we came, they caught three buffaloes in pitfalls in
one night, and, unable to eat them all, left one to rot. During the
night the wind changed and blew from the dead buffalo to our
sleeping-place; and a hungry lion, not at all dainty in his food,
stirred up the putrid mass, and growled and gloated over his feast,
to the disturbance of our slumbers. Game of all kinds is in most
extraordinary abundance, especially from this point to below the
Kafue, and so it is on Moselekatso's side, where there are no
inhabitants. The drought drives all the game to the river to drink.
An hour's walk on the right bank, morning or evening, reveals a
country swarming with wild animals:
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