WITH LIVINGSTONE IN. ‘SOUTH AFRICA ‘147 
3 Slcveate the sleeping flies. I was in advance with the gun and 
half a dozen Kafirs with axes, with which they had been clearing 
_ the way. In the very early morning we reached the river, nar- 
row, but deep, with steep banks. I asked the guide if we could 
cross it. ‘Do they swim?’ he asked, pointing to the waggons. 
_ *No,’ I answered ; ‘where’s the ford?’ There was none, he said. 
_. ‘Are there tsétsé here?’ I inquired, and he replied that there 
_ were plenty. ‘What are we to do with the animals?’ and 
he told me to drive them as near as possible to the water, 
into the reeds, as the flies were not there, only in the bush. 
The pests were beginning to buzz about as the sun rose, so we 
- took the man’s advice, and while the others lay down for a rest 
of an hour or two I volunteered to keep watch. Putting my 
back against a tree, I kept my eyes steadfastly fixed on my 
_ charge for a time, and then I suppose I must have closed them, 
though of course I should deny that I was asleep. 
_ Suddenly I was roused from my reverie by a salutation in 
Sechuana—‘ Ruméla.’ I looked up, and before me stood a tall 
stalwart Kafir, clothed in a lady’s dressing-gown. It came 
scantily to his knee, and in other parts seemed hardly to have 
_ been made for him, and his appearance was so queer that I 
_ burst intoa laugh. I saw the blood rise in his dusky face as 
_ he asked what I was laughing at. ‘Why, you have got on a 
- woman’s dress from my country,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know 
_ about that,’ he said, ‘but I gave a woman for it last year.’ We 
_ had come unaware upon the southern limit of the slave trade. 
ea It was months since we had last seen any products of European 
- manufacture except those we had brought with us, and here 
" they were in 18° S. Lat., in the middle of South Africa, 1,500 
to 1,800 miles from any sea. Livingstone woke up, smoothed 
‘down my visitor, and inquired what we could do with the 
cattle. We could not leave them where they were ; they 
‘would find nothing to eat, and besides, when the sun got hot 
‘the flies would find their way to them. We must drive them 
across the river, as there were no tsétsé there, the man told 
us; and we found it was so, the narrowest lines frequently 
L2 
