A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries

We passed through a fertile country, covered with open forest, accompanied by the friendly Bawé.  They are very hospitable; many of them were named, among themselves, “the Baenda pezi,” or “Go-nakeds,” their only clothing being a coat of red ochre.  Occasionally stopping at their villages we were duly lullilooed, and regaled with sweet new-made beer, which, being yet unfermented, was not intoxicating.  It is in this state called Liting or Makondé.  Some of the men carry large shields of buffalo-hide, and all are well supplied with heavy spears.  The vicinity of the villages is usually cleared and cultivated in large patches; but nowhere can the country be said to be stocked with people.  At every village stands were erected, and piles of the native corn, still unthrashed, placed upon them; some had been beaten out, put into oblong parcels made of grass, and stacked in wooden frames.

We crossed several rivulets in our course, as the Mandora, the Lofia, the Manzaia (with brackish water), the Rimbé, the Chibué, the Chezia, the Chilola (containing fragments of coal), which did little more than mark our progress.  The island and rapid of Nakansalo, of which we had formerly heard, were of no importance, the rapid being but half a mile long, and only on one side of the island.  The island Kaluzi marks one of the numerous places where astronomical observations were made; Mozia, a station where a volunteer poet left us; the island Mochenya, and Mpandé island, at the mouth of the Zungwé rivulet, where we left the Zambesi.

When favoured with the hospitality and company of the “Go-nakeds,” we tried to discover if nudity were the badge of a particular order among the Bawé, but they could only refer to custom.  Some among them had always liked it for no reason in particular: shame seemed to lie dormant, and the sense could not be aroused by our laughing and joking them on their appearance.  They evidently felt no less decent than we did with our clothes on; but, whatever may be said in favour of nude statues, it struck us that man, in a state of nature, is a most ungainly animal.  Could we see a number of the degraded of our own lower classes in like guise, it is probable that, without the black colour which acts somehow as a dress, they would look worse still.

In domestic contentions the Bawé are careful not to kill each other; but, when one village goes to war with another, they are not so particular.  The victorious party are said to quarter one of the bodies of the enemies they may have killed, and to perform certain ceremonies over the fragments.  The vanquished call upon their conquerors to give them a portion also; and, when this request is complied with, they too perform the same ceremonies, and lament over their dead comrade, after which the late combatants may visit each other in peace.  Sometimes the head of the slain is taken and buried in an ant-hill, till all the flesh is gone; and the lower jaw is then worn as a trophy by the slayer; but this we never saw, and the foregoing information was obtained only through an interpreter.

We left the Zambesi at the mouth of the Zungwé or Mozama or Dela rivulet, up which we proceeded, first in a westerly and then in a north-westerly direction.  The Zungwé at this time had no water in its sandy channel for the first eight or ten miles.  Willows, however, grow on the banks, and water soon began to appear in the hollows; and a few miles further up it was a fine flowing stream deliciously cold.  As in many other streams from Chicova to near Sinamané shale and coal crop out in the bank; and here the large roots of stigmaria or its allied plants were found.  We followed the course of the Zungwé to the foot of the Batoka highlands, up whose steep and rugged sides of red and white quartz we climbed till we attained an altitude of upwards of 3000 feet.  Here, on the cool and bracing heights, the exhilaration of mind and body was delightful, as we looked back at the hollow beneath covered with a hot sultry glare, not unpleasant now that we were in the mild radiance above.  We had a noble view of the great valley in which the Zambesi flows.  The cultivated portions are so small in comparison to the rest of the landscape that the valley appears nearly all forest, with a few grassy glades.  We spent the night of the 28th July high above the level of the sea, by the rivulet Tyotyo, near Tabacheu or Chirebuechina, names both signifying white mountain; in the morning hoar frost covered the ground, and thin ice was on the pools.  Skirting the southern flank of Tabacheu, we soon passed from the hills on to the portion of the vast table-land called Mataba, and looking back saw all the way across the Zambesi valley to the lofty ridge some thirty miles off, which, coming from the Mashona, a country in the S.E., runs to the N.W. to join the ridge at the angle of which are the Victoria Falls, and then bends far to the N.E. from the same point.  Only a few years since these extensive highlands were peopled by the Batoka; numerous herds of cattle furnished abundance of milk, and the rich soil amply repaid the labour of the husbandman; now large herds of buffaloes, zebras, and antelopes fatten on the excellent pasture; and on that land, which formerly supported multitudes, not a man is to been seen.  In travelling from Monday morning till late on Saturday afternoon, all the way from Tabacheu to Moachemba, which is only twenty-one miles of latitude from the Victoria Falls, and constantly passing the ruined sites of utterly deserted Botoka villages, we did not fall in with a single person.  The Batoka were driven out of their noble country by the invasions of Moselekatsé and Sebetuané.  Several tribes of Bechuana and Basutu, fleeing from the Zulu or Matebelé chief Moselekatsé reached the Zambesi above the Falls.  Coming from a land without rivers, none of them knew how to swim; and one tribe, called the Bamangwato, wishing to cross the Zambesi, was ferried over, men and women separately, to different islands, by one of the Batoka chiefs; the men were then left to starve and the women appropriated by the ferryman and his people.  Sekomi, the present chief of the Bamangwato, then an infant in his mother’s arms, was enabled, through the kindness of a private Batoka, to escape.  This act seems to have made an indelible impression on Sekomi’s heart, for though otherwise callous, he still never fails to inquire after the welfare of his benefactor.

Sebetuané, with his wonted ability, outwitted the treacherous Batoka, by insisting in the politest manner on their chief remaining at his own side until the people and cattle were all carried safe across; the chief was then handsomely rewarded, both with cattle and brass rings off Sebetuané’s own wives.  No sooner were the Makololo, then called Basuto, safely over, than they were confronted by the whole Batoka nation; and to this day the Makololo point with pride to the spot on the Lekoné, near to which they were encamped, where Sebetuané, with a mere handful of warriors in comparison to the vast horde that surrounded him, stood waiting the onslaught, the warriors in one small body, the women and children guarding the cattle behind them.  The Batoka, of course, melted away before those who had been made veterans by years of continual fighting, and Sebetuané always justified his subsequent conquests in that country by alleging that the Batoka had come out to fight with a man fleeing for his life, who had never done them any wrong.  They seem never to have been a warlike race; passing through their country, we once observed a large stone cairn, and our guide favoured us with the following account of it:—“Once upon a time, our forefathers were going to fight another tribe, and here they halted and sat down.  After a long consultation, they came to the unanimous conclusion that, instead of proceeding to fight and kill their neighbours, and perhaps be killed themselves, it would be more like men to raise this heap of stones, as their protest against the wrong the other tribe had done them, which, having accomplished, they returned quietly home.”  Such men of peace could not stand before the Makololo, nor, of course, the more warlike Matebelé, who coming afterwards, drove even their conquerors, the Makololo, out of the country.  Sebetuané, however, profiting by the tactics which he had learned of the Batoka, inveigled a large body of this new enemy on to another island, and after due starvation there overcame the whole.  A much greater army of “Moselekatsé’s own” followed with canoes, but were now baffled by Sebetuané’s placing all his people and cattle on an island and so guarding it that none could approach.  Dispirited, famished, borne down by fever, they returned to the Falls, and all except five were cut off.

But though the Batoka appear never to have had much inclination to fight with men, they are decidedly brave hunters of buffaloes and elephants.  They go fearlessly close up to these formidable animals, and kill them with large spears.  The Banyai, who have long bullied all Portuguese traders, were amazed at the daring and bravery of the Batoka in coming at once to close quarters with the elephant; and Chisaka, a Portuguese rebel, having formerly induced a body of this tribe to settle with him, ravaged all the Portuguese villas around Tette.  They bear the name of Basimilongwé, and some of our men found relations among them.  Sininyané and Matenga also, two of our party, were once inveigled into a Portuguese expedition against Mariano, by the assertion that the Doctor had arrived and had sent for them to come down to Senna.  On finding that they were entrapped to fight, they left, after seeing an officer with a large number of Tette slaves killed.

The Batoka had attained somewhat civilized ideas, in planting and protecting various fruit and oil-seed yielding trees of the country.  No other tribe either plants or abstains from cutting down fruit trees, but here we saw some which had been planted in regular rows, and the trunks of which were quite two feet in diameter.  The grand old Mosibé, a tree yielding a bean with a thin red pellicle, said to be very fattening, had probably seen two hundred summers.  Dr. Kirk found that the Mosibé is peculiar, in being allied to a species met with only in the West Indies.  The Motsikiri, sometimes called Mafuta, yields a hard fat, and an oil which is exported from Inhambane.  It is said that two ancient Batoka travellers went down as far as the Loangwa, and finding the Maçãã tree (jujube or zisyphus) in fruit, carried the seed all the way back to the great Falls, in order to plant them.  Two of these trees are still to be seen there, the only specimens of the kind in that region.

The Batoka had made a near approach to the custom of more refined nations and had permanent graveyards, either on the sides of hills, thus rendered sacred, or under large old shady trees; they reverence the tombs of their ancestors, and plant the largest elephants’ tusks, as monuments at the head of the grave, or entirely enclose it with the choicest ivory.  Some of the other tribes throw the dead body into the river to be devoured by crocodiles, or, sewing it up in a mat, place it on the branch of a baobab, or cast it in some lonely gloomy spot, surrounded by dense tropical vegetation, where it affords a meal to the foul hyenas; but the Batoka reverently bury their dead, and regard the spot henceforth as sacred.  The ordeal by the poison of the muavé is resorted to by the Batoka, as well as by the other tribes; but a cock is often made to stand proxy for the supposed witch.  Near the confluence of the Kafué the Mambo, or chief, with some of his headmen, came to our sleeping-place with a present; their foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an unusual seriousness marked their demeanour.  Shortly before our arrival they had been accused of witchcraft; conscious of innocence, they accepted the ordeal, and undertook to drink the poisoned muavé.  For this purpose they made a journey to the sacred hill of Nchomokela, on which repose the bodies of their ancestors; and, after a solemn appeal to the unseen spirits to attest the innocence of their children, they swallowed the muavé, vomited, and were therefore declared not guilty.  It is evident that they believe that the soul has a continued existence; and that the spirits of the departed know what those they have left behind them are doing, and are pleased or not according as their deeds are good or evil; this belief is universal.  The owner of a large canoe refused to sell it, because it belonged to the spirit of his father, who helped him when he killed the hippopotamus.  Another, when the bargain for his canoe was nearly completed, seeing a large serpent on a branch of the tree overhead, refused to complete the sale, alleging that this was the spirit of his father come to protest against it.

Some of the Batoka chiefs must have been men of considerable enterprise; the land of one, in the western part of this country, was protected by the Zambesi on the S., and on the N. and E. lay an impassable reedy marsh, filled with water all the year round, leaving only his western border open to invasion: he conceived the idea of digging a broad and deep canal nearly a mile in length, from the reedy marsh to the Zambesi, and, having actually carried the scheme into execution, he formed a large island, on which his cattle grazed in safety, and his corn ripened from year to year secure from all marauders.

Another chief, who died a number of years ago, believed that he had discovered a remedy for tsetse-bitten cattle; his son Moyara showed us a plant, which was new to our botanist, and likewise told us how the medicine was prepared; the bark of the root, and, what might please our homoeopathic friends, a dozen of the tsetse are dried, and ground together into a fine powder.  This mixture is administered internally; and the cattle are fumigated by burning under them the rest of the plant collected.  The treatment must be continued for weeks, whenever the symptoms of poison appear.  This medicine, he frankly admitted, would not cure all the bitten cattle.  “For,” said he, “cattle, and men too, die in spite of medicine; but should a herd by accident stray into a tsetse district and be bitten, by this medicine of my father, Kampa-kampa, some of them could be saved, while, without it, all would inevitably die.”  He stipulated that we were not to show the medicine to other people, and if ever we needed it in this region we must employ him; but if we were far off we might make it ourselves; and when we saw it cure the cattle think of him, and send him a present.

Our men made it known everywhere that we wished the tribes to live in peace, and would use our influence to induce Sekeletu to prevent the Batoka of Moshobotwané and the Makololo under-chiefs making forays into their country: they had already suffered severely, and their remonstrances with their countryman, Moshobotwané, evoked only the answer, “The Makololo have given me a spear; why should I not use it?”  He, indeed, it was who, being remarkably swift of foot, first guided the Makololo in their conquest of the country.  In the character of peacemakers, therefore, we experienced abundant hospitality; and, from the Kafué to the Falls, none of our party was allowed to suffer hunger.  The natives sent to our sleeping-places generous presents of the finest white meal, and fat capons to give it a relish, great pots of beer to comfort our hearts, together with pumpkins, beans, and tobacco, so that we “should sleep neither hungry nor thirsty.”

In travelling from the Kafué to the Zungwé we frequently passed several villages in the course of a day’s march.  In the evening came deputies from the villages, at which we could not stay to sleep, with liberal presents of food.  It would have pained them to have allowed strangers to pass without partaking of their hospitality; repeatedly were we hailed from huts, and asked to wait a moment and drink a little of the beer, which was brought with alacrity.  Our march resembled a triumphant procession.  We entered and left every village amidst the cheers of its inhabitants; the men clapping their hands, and the women lullilooing, with the shrill call, “Let us sleep,” or “Peace.”  Passing through a hamlet one day, our guide called to the people, “Why do you not clap your hands and salute when you see men who are wishing to bring peace to the land?”  When we halted for the night it was no uncommon thing for the people to prepare our camp entirely of their own accord; some with hoes quickly smoothed the ground for our beds, others brought dried grass and spread it carefully over the spot; some with their small axes speedily made a bush fence to shield us from the wind; and if, as occasionally happened, the water was a little distance off, others hastened and brought it with firewood to cook our food with.  They are an industrious people, and very fond of agriculture.  For hours together we marched through unbroken fields of mapira, or native corn, of a great width; but one can give no idea of the extent of land under the hoe as compared with any European country.  The extent of surface is so great that the largest fields under culture, when viewed on a wide landscape, dwindle to mere spots.  When taken in connection with the wants of the people, the cultivation on the whole is most creditable to their industry.  They erect numerous granaries which give their villages the appearance of being large; and, when the water of the Zambesi has subsided, they place large quantities of grain, tied up in bundles of grass, and well plastered over with clay, on low sand islands for protection from the attacks of marauding mice and men.  Owing to the ravages of the weevil, the native corn can hardly be preserved until the following crop comes in.  However largely they may cultivate, and however abundant the harvest, it must all be consumed in a year.  This may account for their making so much of it into beer.  The beer these Batoka or Bawé brew is not the sour and intoxicating boala or pombe found among some other tribes, but sweet, and highly nutritive, with only a slight degree of acidity, sufficient to render it a pleasant drink.  The people were all plump, and in good condition; and we never saw a single case of intoxication among them, though all drank abundance of this liting, or sweet beer.  Both men and boys were eager to work for very small pay.  Our men could hire any number of them to carry their burdens for a few beads a day.  Our miserly and dirty ex-cook had an old pair of trousers that some one had given to him; after he had long worn them himself, with one of the sorely decayed legs he hired a man to carry his heavy load a whole day; a second man carried it the next day for the other leg, and what remained of the old garment, without the buttons, procured the labour of another man for the third day.

Men of remarkable ability have risen up among the Africans from time to time, as amongst other portions of the human family.  Some have attracted the attention, and excited the admiration of large districts by their wisdom.  Others, apparently by the powers of ventriloquism, or by peculiar dexterity in throwing the spear, or shooting with the bow, have been the wonder of their generation; but the total absence of literature leads to the loss of all former experience, and the wisdom of the wise has not been handed down.  They have had their minstrels too, but mere tradition preserves not their effusions.  One of these, and apparently a genuine poet, attached himself to our party for several days, and whenever we halted, sang our praises to the villagers, in smooth and harmonious numbers.  It was a sort of blank verse, and each line consisted of five syllables.  The song was short when it first began, but each day he picked up more information about us, and added to the poem until our praises became an ode of respectable length.  When distance from home compelled his return he expressed his regret at leaving us, and was, of course, paid for his useful and pleasant flatteries.  Another, though a less gifted son of song, belonged to the Batoka of our own party.  Every evening, while the others were cooking, talking, or sleeping, he rehearsed his songs, containing a history of everything he had seen in the land of the white men, and on the way back.  In composing, extempore, any new piece, he was never at a loss; for if the right word did not come he halted not, but eked out the measure with a peculiar musical sound meaning nothing at all.  He accompanied his recitations on the sansa, an instrument figured in the woodcut, the nine iron keys of which are played with the thumbs, while the fingers pass behind to hold it.  The hollow end and ornaments face the breast of the player.  Persons of a musical turn, if too poor to buy a sansa, may be seen playing vigorously on an instrument made with a number of thick corn-stalks sewn together, as a sansa frame, and keys of split bamboo, which, though making but little sound, seems to soothe the player himself.  When the instrument is played with a calabash as a sounding board, it emits a greater volume of sound.  Pieces of shells and tin are added to make a jingling accompaniment, and the calabash is also ornamented.

After we had passed up, a party of slaves, belonging to the two native Portuguese who assassinated the chief, Mpangwé, and took possession of his lands at Zumbo, followed on our footsteps, and representing themselves to be our “children,” bought great quantities of ivory from the Bawé, for a few coarse beads a tusk.  They also purchased ten large new canoes to carry it, at the rate of six strings of red or white beads, or two fathoms of grey calico, for each canoe, and, at the same cheap rate, a number of good-looking girls.

CHAPTER VII

The Victoria Falls of the Zambesi—Marvellous grandeur of the Cataracts—The Makololo’s town—The Chief Sekeletu.

During the time we remained at Motunta a splendid meteor was observed to lighten the whole heavens.  The observer’s back was turned to it, but on looking round the streak of light was seen to remain on its path some seconds.  This streak is usually explained to be only the continuance of the impression made by the shining body on the retina.  This cannot be, as in this case the meteor was not actually seen and yet the streak was clearly perceived.  The rays of planets and stars also require another explanation than that usually given.

Fruit-trees and gigantic wild fig-trees, and circles of stones on which corn safes were placed, with worn grindstones, point out where the villages once stood.  The only reason now assigned for this fine country remaining desolate is the fear of fresh visitations by the Matebelé.  The country now slopes gradually to the west into the Makololo Valley.  Two days’ march from the Batoka village nearest the highlands, we met with some hunters who were burning the dry grass, in order to attract the game by the fresh vegetation which speedily springs up afterwards.  The grass, as already remarked, is excellent for cattle.  One species, with leaves having finely serrated edges, and of a reddish-brown colour, we noticed our men eating: it tastes exactly like liquorice-root, and is named kezu-kezu.  The tsetse, known to the Batoka by the name “ndoka,” does not exist here, though buffaloes and elephants abound.

A small trap in the path, baited with a mouse, to catch spotted cats (F. Genetta), is usually the first indication that we are drawing near to a village; but when we get within the sounds of pounding corn, cockcrowing, or the merry shouts of children at play, we know that the huts are but a few yards off, though the trees conceal them from view.  We reached, on the 4th of August, Moachemba, the first of the Batoka villages which now owe allegiance to Sekeletu, and could see distinctly with the naked eye, in the great valley spread out before us, the columns of vapour rising from the Victoria Falls, though upwards of 20 miles distant.  We were informed that, the rains having failed this year, the corn crops had been lost, and great scarcity and much hunger prevailed from Sesheké to Linyanti.  Some of the reports which the men had heard from the Batoka of the hills concerning their families, were here confirmed.  Takelang’s wife had been killed by Mashotlané, the headman at the Falls, on a charge, as usual, of witchcraft.  Inchikola’s two wives, believing him to be dead, had married again; and Masakasa was intensely disgusted to hear that two years ago his friends, upon a report of his death, threw his shield over the Falls, slaughtered all his oxen, and held a species of wild Irish wake, in honour of his memory: he said he meant to disown them, and to say, when they come to salute him, “I am dead.  I am not here.  I belong to another world, and should stink if I came among you.”

All the sad news we had previously heard, of the disastrous results which followed the attempt of a party of missionaries, under the Rev. H. Helmore, to plant the gospel at Linyanti, were here fully confirmed.  Several of the missionaries and their native attendants, from Kuruman, had succumbed to the fever, and the survivors had retired some weeks before our arrival.  We remained the whole of the 7th beside the village of the old Batoka chief, Moshobotwané, the stoutest man we have seen in Africa.  The cause of our delay here was a severe attack of fever in Charles Livingstone.  He took a dose of our fever pills; was better on the 8th, and marched three hours; then on the 9th marched eight miles to the Great Falls, and spent the rest of the day in the fatiguing exercise of sight-seeing.  We were in the very same valley as Linyanti, and this was the same fever which treated, or rather maltreated, with only a little Dover’s powder, proved so fatal to poor Helmore; the symptoms, too, were identical with those afterwards described by non-medical persons as those of poison.

We gave Moshobotwané a present, and a pretty plain exposition of what we thought of his bloody forays among his Batoka brethren.  A scolding does most good to the recipient, when put alongside some obliging act.  He certainly did not take it ill, as was evident from what he gave us in return; which consisted of a liberal supply of meal, milk, and an ox.  He has a large herd of cattle, and a tract of fine pasture-land on the beautiful stream Lekoné.  A home-feeling comes over one, even in the interior of Africa, at seeing once more cattle grazing peacefully in the meadows.  The tsetse inhabits the trees which bound the pasture-land on the west; so, should the herdsman forget his duty, the cattle straying might be entirely lost.  The women of this village were more numerous than the men, the result of the chief’s marauding.  The Batoko wife of Sima came up from the Falls, to welcome her husband back, bringing a present of the best fruits of the country.  Her husband was the only one of the party who had brought a wife from Tette, namely, the girl whom he obtained from Chisaka for his feats of dancing.  According to our ideas, his first wife could hardly have been pleased at seeing the second and younger one; but she took her away home with her, while the husband remained with us.  In going down to the Fall village we met several of the real Makololo.  They are lighter in colour than the other tribes, being of a rich warm brown; and they speak in a slow deliberate manner, distinctly pronouncing every word.  On reaching the village opposite Kalai, we had an interview with the Makololo headman, Mashotlané: he came to the shed in which we were seated, a little boy carrying his low three-legged stool before him: on this he sat down with becoming dignity, looked round him for a few seconds, then at us, and, saluting us with “Rumela” (good morning, or hail), he gave us some boiled hippopotamus meat, took a piece himself, and then handed the rest to his attendants, who soon ate it up.  He defended his forays on the ground that, when he went to collect tribute, the Batoka attacked him, and killed some of his attendants.  The excuses made for their little wars are often the very same as those made by Cæsar in his “Commentaries.”  Few admit, like old Moshobotwané, that they fought because they had the power, and a fair prospect of conquering.  We found here Pitsané, who had accompanied the Doctor to St. Paul de Loanda.  He had been sent by Sekeletu to purchase three horses from a trading party of Griquas from Kuruman, who charged nine large tusks apiece for very wretched animals.

In the evening, when all was still, one of our men, Takelang, fired his musket, and cried out, “I am weeping for my wife: my court is desolate: I have no home;” and then uttered a loud wail of anguish.

We proceeded next morning, 9th August, 1860, to see the Victoria Falls.  Mosi-oa-tunya is the Makololo name and means smoke sounding; Seongo or Chongwé, meaning the Rainbow, or the place of the Rainbow, was the more ancient term they bore.  We embarked in canoes, belonging to Tuba Mokoro, “smasher of canoes,” an ominous name; but he alone, it seems, knew the medicine which insures one against shipwreck in the rapids above the Falls.  For some miles the river was smooth and tranquil, and we glided pleasantly over water clear as crystal, and past lovely islands densely covered with a tropical vegetation.  Noticeable among the many trees were the lofty Hyphæne and Borassus palms; the graceful wild date-palm, with its fruit in golden clusters, and the umbrageous mokononga, of cypress form, with its dark-green leaves and scarlet fruit.  Many flowers peeped out near the water’s edge, some entirely new to us, and others, as the convolvulus, old acquaintances.

But our attention was quickly called from the charming islands to the dangerous rapids, down which Tuba might unintentionally shoot us.  To confess the truth, the very ugly aspect of these roaring rapids could scarcely fail to cause some uneasiness in the minds of new-comers.  It is only when the river is very low, as it was now, that any one durst venture to the island to which we were bound.  If one went during the period of flood, and fortunately hit the island, he would be obliged to remain there till the water subsided again, if he lived so long.  Both hippopotami and elephants have been known to be swept over the Falls, and of course smashed to pulp.

Before entering the race of waters, we were requested not to speak, as our talking might diminish the virtue of the medicine; and no one with such boiling eddying rapids before his eyes, would think of disobeying the orders of a “canoe-smasher.”  It soon became evident that there was sound sense in this request of Tuba’s, although the reason assigned was not unlike that of the canoe-man from Sesheke, who begged one of our party not to whistle, because whistling made the wind come.  It was the duty of the man at the bow to look out ahead for the proper course, and when he saw a rock or snag, to call out to the steersman.  Tuba doubtless thought that talking on board might divert the attention of his steersman, at a time when the neglect of an order, or a slight mistake, would be sure to spill us all into the chafing river.  There were places where the utmost exertions of both men had to be put forth in order to force the canoe to the only safe part of the rapid, and to prevent it from sweeping down broadside on, where in a twinkling we should have found ourselves floundering among the plotuses and cormorants, which were engaged in diving for their breakfast of small fish.  At times it seemed as if nothing could save us from dashing in our headlong race against the rocks which, now that the river was low, jutted out of the water; but just at the very nick of time, Tuba passed the word to the steersman, and then with ready pole turned the canoe a little aside, and we glided swiftly past the threatened danger.  Never was canoe more admirably managed: once only did the medicine seem to have lost something of its efficacy.  We were driving swiftly down, a black rock over which the white foam flew, lay directly in our path, the pole was planted against it as readily as ever, but it slipped, just as Tuba put forth his strength to turn the bow off.  We struck hard, and were half-full of water in a moment; Tuba recovered himself as speedily, shoved off the bow, and shot the canoe into a still shallow place, to bale out the water.  Here we were given to understand that it was not the medicine which was at fault; that had lost none of its virtue; the accident was owing entirely to Tuba having started without his breakfast.  Need it be said we never let Tuba go without that meal again?

We landed at the head of Garden Island, which is situated near the middle of the river and on the lip of the Falls.  On reaching that lip, and peering over the giddy height, the wondrous and unique character of the magnificent cascade at once burst upon us.

It is rather a hopeless task to endeavour to convey an idea of it in words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an accomplished painter, even by a number of views, could but impart a faint impression of the glorious scene.  The probable mode of its formation may perhaps help to the conception of its peculiar shape.  Niagara has been formed by a wearing back of the rock over which the river falls; and during a long course of ages, it has gradually receded, and left a broad, deep, and pretty straight trough in front.  It goes on wearing back daily, and may yet discharge the lakes from which its river—the St. Lawrence—flows.  But the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed the bed of the Zambesi.  The lips of the crack are still quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls.  The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or symptoms of stratification or dislocation.  When the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite side of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once the river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we sail.  The first crack is, in length, a few yards more than the breadth of the Zambesi, which by measurement we found to be a little over 1860 yards, but this number we resolved to retain as indicating the year in which the Fall was for the first time carefully examined.  The main stream here runs nearly north and south, and the cleft across it is nearly east and west.  The depth of the rift was measured by lowering a line, to the end of which a few bullets and a foot of white cotton cloth were tied.  One of us lay with his head over a projecting crag, and watched the descending calico, till, after his companions had paid out 310 feet, the weight rested on a sloping projection, probably 50 feet from the water below, the actual bottom being still further down.  The white cloth now appeared the size of a crown-piece.  On measuring the width of this deep cleft by sextant, it was found at Garden Island, its narrowest part, to be eighty yards, and at its broadest somewhat more.  Into this chasm, of twice the depth of Niagara-fall, the river, a full mile wide, rolls with a deafening roar; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or the Victoria Falls.

Looking from Garden Island, down to the bottom of the abyss, nearly half a mile of water, which has fallen over that portion of the Falls to our right, or west of our point of view, is seen collected in a narrow channel twenty or thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly right angles to its previous course, to our left; while the other half, or that which fell over the eastern portion of the Falls, is seen in the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our right.  Both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and find an outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of the Falls.  This outlet is about 1170 yards from the western end of the chasm, and some 600 from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its commencement.  The Zambesi, now apparently not more than twenty or thirty yards wide, rushes and surges south, through the narrow escape-channel for 130 yards; then enters a second chasm somewhat deeper, and nearly parallel with the first.  Abandoning the bottom of the eastern half of this second chasm to the growth of large trees, it turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, with the escape-channel at its point, of 1170 yards long, and 416 yards broad at the base.  After reaching this base, the river runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, and flows away to the east, in a third chasm; then glides round a third promontory, much narrower than the rest, and away back to the west, in a fourth chasm; and we could see in the distance that it appeared to round still another promontory, and bend once more in another chasm towards the east.  In this gigantic, zigzag, yet narrow trough, the rocks are all so sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once arises that the hard basaltic trap must have been riven into its present shape by a force acting from beneath, and that this probably took place when the ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer the ocean.

The land beyond, or on the south of the Falls, retains, as already remarked, the same level as before the rent was made.  It is as if the trough below Niagara were bent right and left, several times before it reached the railway bridge.  The land in the supposed bends being of the same height as that above the Fall, would give standing-places, or points of view, of the same nature as that from the railway-bridge, but the nearest would be only eighty yards, instead of two miles (the distance to the bridge) from the face of the cascade.  The tops of the promontories are in general flat, smooth, and studded with trees.  The first, with its base on the east, is at one place so narrow, that it would be dangerous to walk to its extremity.  On the second, however, we found a broad rhinoceros path and a hut; but, unless the builder were a hermit, with a pet rhinoceros, we cannot conceive what beast or man ever went there for.  On reaching the apex of this second eastern promontory we saw the great river, of a deep sea-green colour, now sorely compressed, gliding away, at least 400 feet below us.

Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the best view of the Great Fall chasm, as also of the promontory opposite, with its grove of large evergreen trees, and brilliant rainbows of three-quarters of a circle, two, three, and sometimes even four in number, resting on the face of the vast perpendicular rock, down which tiny streams are always running to be swept again back by the upward rushing vapour.  But as, at Niagara, one has to go over to the Canadian shore to see the chief wonder—the Great Horse-shoe Fall—so here we have to cross over to Moselekatsé’s side to the promontory of evergreens, for the best view of the principal Falls of Mosi-oa-tunya.  Beginning, therefore, at the base of this promontory, and facing the Cataract, at the west end of the chasm, there is, first, a fall of thirty-six yards in breadth, and of course, as they all are, upwards of 310 feet in depth.  Then Boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a great fall, with a breadth of 573 yards; a projecting rock separates this from a second grand fall of 325 yards broad; in all, upwards of 900 yards of perennial Falls.  Further east stands Garden Island; then, as the river was at its lowest, came a good deal of the bare rock of its bed, with a score of narrow falls, which, at the time of flood, constitute one enormous cascade of nearly another half-mile.  Near the east end of the chasm are two larger falls, but they are nothing at low water compared to those between the islands.

The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass suddenly becomes like a huge sheet of driven snow.  Pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets.  This peculiarity was not observed by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, and here it happens, possibly from the dryness of the atmosphere, or whatever the cause may be which makes every drop of Zambesi water appear to possess a sort of individuality.  It runs off the ends of the paddles, and glides in beads along the smooth surface, like drops of quicksilver on a table.  Here we see them in a conglomeration, each with a train of pure white vapour, racing down till lost in clouds of spray.  A stone dropped in became less and less to the eye, and at last disappeared in the dense mist below.

Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi-oa-tunya the palm, though now at the end of a drought, and the river at its very lowest.  Many feel a disappointment on first seeing the great American Falls, but Mosi-oa-tunya is so strange, it must ever cause wonder.  In the amount of water, Niagara probably excels, though not during the months when the Zambesi is in flood.  The vast body of water, separating in the comet-like forms described, necessarily encloses in its descent a large volume of air, which, forced into the cleft, to an unknown depth, rebounds, and rushes up loaded with vapour to form the three or even six columns, as if of steam, visible at the Batoka village Moachemba, twenty-one miles distant.  On attaining a height of 200, or at most 300 feet from the level of the river above the cascade, this vapour becomes condensed into a perpetual shower of fine rain.  Much of the spray, rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the grove of evergreen trees opposite; and from their leaves, heavy drops are for ever falling, to form sundry little rills, which, in running down the steep face of rock, are blown off and turned back, or licked off their perpendicular bed, up into the column from which they have just descended.

The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke with all the glowing colours of double or treble rainbows.  The evening sun, from a hot yellow sky, imparts a sulphureous hue, and gives one the impression that the yawning gulf might resemble the mouth of the bottomless pit.  No bird sits and sings on the branches of the grove of perpetual showers, or ever builds its nest there.  We saw hornbills and flocks of little black weavers flying across from the mainland to the islands, and from the islands to the points of the promontories and back again, but they uniformly shunned the region of perpetual rain, occupied by the evergreen grove.  The sunshine, elsewhere in this land so overpowering, never penetrates the deep gloom of that shade.  In the presence of the strange Mosi-oa-tunya, we can sympathize with those who, when the world was young, peopled earth, air, and river, with beings not of mortal form.  Sacred to what deity would be this awful chasm and that dark grove, over which hovers an ever-abiding “pillar of cloud”?

The ancient Batoka chieftains used Kazeruka, now Garden Island, and Boaruka, the island further west, also on the lip of the Falls, as sacred spots for worshipping the Deity.  It is no wonder that under the cloudy columns, and near the brilliant rainbows, with the ceaseless roar of the cataract, with the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth from the hand of the Almighty, their souls should be filled with reverential awe.  It inspired wonder in the native mind throughout the interior.  Among the first questions asked by Sebituané of Mr. Oswell and Dr. Livingstone, in 1851, was, “Have you any smoke soundings in your country,” and “what causes the smoke to rise for ever so high out of water?”  In that year its fame was heard 200 miles off, and it was approached within two days; but it was seen by no European till 1855, when Dr. Livingstone visited it on his way to the East Coast.  Being then accompanied as far as this Fall by Sekeletu and 200 followers, his stay was necessarily short; and the two days there were employed in observations for fixing the geographical position of the place, and turning the showers, that at times sweep from the columns of vapour across the island, to account, in teaching the Makololo arboriculture, and making that garden from which the natives named the island; so that he did not visit the opposite sides of the cleft, nor see the wonderful course of the river beyond the Falls.  The hippopotami had destroyed the trees which were then planted; and, though a strong stockaded hedge was made again, and living orange-trees, cashew-nuts, and coffee seeds put in afresh, we fear that the perseverance of the hippopotami will overcome the obstacle of the hedge.  It would require a resident missionary to rear European fruit-trees.  The period at which the peach and apricot come into blossom is about the end of the dry season, and artificial irrigation is necessary.  The Batoka, the only arboriculturists in the country, rear native fruit-trees alone—the mosibe, the motsikiri, the boma, and others.  When a tribe takes an interest in trees, it becomes more attached to the spot on which they are planted, and they prove one of the civilizing influences.

Where one Englishman goes, others are sure to follow.  Mr. Baldwin, a gentleman from Natal, succeeded in reaching the Falls guided by his pocket-compass alone.  On meeting the second subject of Her Majesty, who had ever beheld the greatest of African wonders, we found him a sort of prisoner at large.  He had called on Mashotlané to ferry him over to the north side of the river, and, when nearly over, he took a bath, by jumping in and swimming ashore.  “If,” said Mashotlané, “he had been devoured by one of the crocodiles which abound there, the English would have blamed us for his death.  He nearly inflicted a great injury upon us, therefore, we said, he must pay a fine.”  As Mr. Baldwin had nothing with him wherewith to pay, they were taking care of him till he should receive beads from his wagon, two days distant.

Mashotlané’s education had been received in the camp of Sebituané, where but little regard was paid to human life.  He was not yet in his prime, and his fine open countenance presented to us no indication of the evil influences which unhappily, from infancy, had been at work on his mind.  The native eye was more penetrating than ours; for the expression of our men was, “He has drunk the blood of men—you may see it in his eyes.”  He made no further difficulty about Mr. Baldwin; but the week after we left he inflicted a severe wound on the head of one of his wives with his rhinoceros-horn club.  She, being of a good family, left him, and we subsequently met her and another of his wives proceeding up the country.

The ground is strewn with agates for a number of miles above the Falls; but the fires, which burn off the grass yearly, have injured most of those on the surface.  Our men were delighted to hear that they do as well as flints for muskets; and this with the new ideas of the value of gold (dalama) and malachite, that they had acquired at Tette, made them conceive that we were not altogether silly in picking up and looking at stones.

Marching up the river, we crossed the Lekoné at its confluence, about eight miles above the island Kalai, and went on to a village opposite the Island Chundu.  Nambowé, the headman, is one of the Matebelé or Zulus, who have had to flee from the anger of Moselekatsé, to take refuge with the Makololo.

We spent Sunday, the 12th, at the village of Molelé, a tall old Batoka, who was proud of having formerly been a great favourite with Sebituané.  In coming hither we passed through patches of forest abounding in all sorts of game.  The elephants’ tusks, placed over graves, are now allowed to decay, and the skulls, which the former Batoka stuck on poles to ornament their villages, not being renewed, now crumble into dust.  Here the famine, of which we had heard, became apparent, Molelé’s people being employed in digging up the tsitla root out of the marshes, and cutting out the soft core of the young palm-trees, for food.

The village, situated on the side of a wooded ridge, commands an extensive view of a great expanse of meadow and marsh lying along the bank of the river.  On these holmes herds of buffaloes and waterbucks daily graze in security, as they have in the reedy marshes a refuge into which they can run on the approach of danger.  The pretty little tianyane or ourebi is abundant further on, and herds of blue weldebeests or brindled gnus (Katoblepas Gorgon) amused us by their fantastic capers.  They present a much more ferocious aspect than the lion himself, but are quite timid.  We never could, by waving a red handkerchief, according to the prescription, induce them to venture near to us.  It may therefore be that the red colour excites their fury only when wounded or hotly pursued.  Herds of lechee or lechwé now enliven the meadows; and they and their younger brother, the graceful poku, smaller, and of a rounder contour, race together towards the grassy fens.  We venture to call the poku after the late Major Vardon, a noble-hearted African traveller; but fully anticipate that some aspiring Nimrod will prefer that his own name should go down to posterity on the back of this buck.

Midway between Tabacheu and the Great Falls the streams begin to flow westward.  On the other side they begin to flow east.  Large round masses of granite, somewhat like old castles, tower aloft about the Kalomo.  The country is an elevated plateau, and our men knew and named the different plains as we passed them by.

On the 13th we met a party from Sekeletu, who was now at Sesheké.  Our approach had been reported, and they had been sent to ask the Doctor what the price of a horse ought to be; and what he said, that they were to give and no more.  In reply they were told that by their having given nine large tusks for one horse before the Doctor came, the Griquas would naturally imagine that the price was already settled.  It was exceedingly amusing to witness the exact imitation they gave of the swagger of a certain white with whom they had been dealing, and who had, as they had perceived, evidently wished to assume an air of indifference.  Holding up the head and scratching the beard it was hinted might indicate not indifference, but vermin.  It is well that we do not always know what they say about us.  The remarks are often not quite complimentary, and resemble closely what certain white travellers say about the blacks.

We made our camp in the afternoon abreast of the large island called Mparira, opposite the mouth of the Chobé.  Francolins, quails, and guinea-fowls, as well as larger game, were abundant.  The Makololo headman, Mokompa, brought us a liberal present; and in the usual way, which is considered politeness, regretted he had no milk, as his cows were all dry.  We got some honey here from the very small stingless bee, called, by the Batoka, moandi, and by others, the kokomatsané.  This honey is slightly acid, and has an aromatic flavour.  The bees are easily known from their habit of buzzing about the eyes, and tickling the skin by sucking it as common flies do.  The hive has a tube of wax like a quill, for its entrance, and is usually in the hollows of trees.

Mokompa feared that the tribe was breaking up, and lamented the condition into which they had fallen in consequence of Sekeletu’s leprosy; he did not know what was to become of them.  He sent two canoes to take us up to Sesheké; his best canoe had taken ivory up to the chief, to purchase goods of some native traders from Benguela.  Above the Falls the paddlers always stand in the canoes, using long paddles, ten feet in length, and changing from side to side without losing the stroke.

Mochokotsa, a messenger from Sekeletu, met us on the 17th, with another request for the Doctor to take ivory and purchase a horse.  He again declined to interfere.  None were to come up to Sekeletu but the Doctor; and all the men who had had smallpox at Tette, three years ago, were to go back to Moshobotwané, and he would sprinkle medicine over them, to drive away the infection, and prevent it spreading in the tribe.  Mochokotsa was told to say to Sekeletu that the disease was known of old to white men, and we even knew the medicine to prevent it; and, were there any danger now, we should be the first to warn him of it.  Why did not he go himself to have Moshobotwané sprinkle medicine to drive away his leprosy.  We were not afraid of his disease, nor of the fever that had killed the teachers and many Makololo at Linyanti.  As this attempt at quarantine was evidently the suggestion of native doctors to increase their own importance, we added that we had no food, and would hunt next day for game, and the day after; and, should we be still ordered purification by their medicine, we should then return to our own country.

The message was not all of our dictation, our companions interlarded it with their own indignant protests, and said some strong things in the Tette dialect about these “doctor things” keeping them back from seeing their father; when to their surprise Mochokotsa told them he knew every word they were saying, as he was of the tribe Bazizulu, and defied them to deceive him by any dialect, either of the Mashona on the east, or of the Mambari on the west.  Mochokotsa then repeated our message twice, to be sure that he had it every word, and went back again.  These chiefs’ messengers have most retentive memories; they carry messages of considerable length great distances, and deliver them almost word for word.  Two or three usually go together, and when on the way the message is rehearsed every night, in order that the exact words may be kept to.  One of the native objections to learning to write is, that these men answer the purpose of transmitting intelligence to a distance as well as a letter would; and, if a person wishes to communicate with any one in the town, the best way to do so is either to go to or send for him.  And as for corresponding with friends very far off, that is all very well for white people, but the blacks have no friends to whom to write.  The only effective argument for the learning to read is, that it is their duty to know the revelation from their Father in Heaven, as it stands in the Book.

Our messenger returned on the evening of the following day with “You speak truly,” says Sekeletu, “the disease is old, come on at once, do not sleep in the path; for I am greatly desirous (tlologelecoe) to see the Doctor.”

After Mochokotsa left us, we met some of Mokompa’s men bringing back the ivory, as horses were preferred to the West-Coast goods.  They were the bearers of instructions to Mokompa, and as these instructions illustrate the government of people who have learned scarcely anything from Europeans, they are inserted, though otherwise of no importance.  Mashotlané had not behaved so civilly to Mr. Baldwin as Sekeletu had ordered him to do to all Englishmen.  He had been very uncivil to the messengers sent by Moselekatsé with letters from Mr. Moffat, treated them as spies, and would not land to take the bag until they moved off.  On our speaking to him about this, he justified his conduct on the plea that he was set at the Falls for the very purpose of watching these, their natural enemies; and how was he to know that they had been sent by Mr. Moffat?  Our men thereupon reported at head-quarters that Mashotlané had cursed the Doctor.  The instructions to Mokompa, from Sekeletu, were to “go and tell Mashotlané that he had offended greatly.  He had not cursed Monaré (Dr. Livingstone) but Sebituané, as Monaré was now in the place of Sebituané, and he reverenced him as he had done his father.  Any fine taken from Mr. Baldwin was to be returned at once, as he was not a Boer but an Englishman.  Sekeletu was very angry, and Mokompa must not conceal the message.”

On finding afterwards that Mashotlané’s conduct had been most outrageous to the Batoka, Sekeletu sent for him to come to Sesheké, in order that he might have him more under his own eye; but Mashotlané, fearing that this meant the punishment of death, sent a polite answer, alleging that he was ill and unable to travel.  Sekeletu tried again to remove Mashotlané from the Falls, but without success.  In theory the chief is absolute and quite despotic; in practice his authority is limited, and he cannot, without occasionally putting refractory headmen to death, force his subordinates to do his will.