XX A TROOP OF LIONS 429 



known Sebituane to be so perverse before, and could 

 not make it out at all ; no more couki we, so we 

 determined to leave the river and make for a pit 

 they knew of, away in the sand- belts. This we 

 reached about mid-day on the 23rd. On the march 

 French shot two tsessebe antelopes and two zebras ; 

 in the evening I also killed a fat zebra mare. We 

 had to dig, or rather the Kafirs had, for about two 

 hours before we got any water in the pit. 



September 2j\.tli. — Reached a pool of water after 

 about a four hours' walk in the bed of what was 

 evidently once a river. Our headmen told us that 

 when Sebituane was alive, this river was full of 

 water, so that they could travel up it in their canoes, 

 from Linyanti on the Chobe to Sesheke on the 

 Zambesi. I find on referring to "Livingstone's 

 Missionary Travels " that this was actually the case 

 when he first visited Linyanti. There can • be no 

 doubt that year by year the overflow of the Chobe, 

 which occurs during the dry season, independently 

 of the rains, and simultaneously with that of the 

 Botletlie, Okavango, Machabe, Tamalakan, and 

 Mababe rivers — a phenomenon of which no satis- 

 factory solution has ever been offered — is becoming 

 gradually less and less. Finding that four big 

 elephant bulls had drunk at this pool during the 

 preceding night, we camped near it, but well below 

 the wind, in the hope that they would return again 

 that night. A troop of lions had also killed and 

 eaten a tsessebe very shortly before our arrival ; the 

 whole place stank of them. The weather is now 

 intensely hot, both day and night. 



The following day, as the bulls we were expecting 

 had not drunk again during the night, we took a 

 turn in the bush to look for spoor, and had not 



