62 THE RIVER ZAMBEZI AND ITS SCENERY 

 like a small, ungainly crocodile, appears as though 

 specially sent to complete a picture of hopeless 

 desolation. 



As, about five hours from Chinde, we near the 

 main body of the Zambezi, however, some slight 

 improvement in our surroundings takes place. The 

 depressing mangrove ceases ; the river banks in- 

 crease in height, and change from black, clinging, 

 viscous mud to a soil of a sandy, or more rarely 

 clayey, character. At the point where one turns 

 into the Zambezi, here some 800 or 900 yards wide, 

 these banks, in the dry season, are fully 15 or 18 

 feet in height, and display in their faces the curious, 

 interesting strata of clay, sand, sandstone, and 

 organic matter of which the local formation is 

 composed. In places they are literally honey- 

 combed for long distances by swifts and sand- 

 martins, and the parent birds wheel and circle round 

 their tiny strongholds just as we have seen them do 

 in the well-remembered sand-pits at home. The 

 water (I am supposing it to be still the middle of 

 May) flows placidly down at a rate of about three 

 miles an hour. It is of a pale cafe-au-lait colour, 

 and bears sand and organic substances carried in 

 suspension from the far interior. It is excellent 

 water, however, and, boiled and filtered, is perfectly 

 wholesome. Over the high banks, fringed with 

 green reeds and high, snowy-plumed spear-grass, 

 clumps of trees now appear ; several kinds of thinly 

 leaved acacias mingling with a curious pale green 

 elm are most numerous, but away beyond, some- 

 times singly and sometimes in groups of half a dozen 

 or more, straight-trunked, clean-cut hyphcene and 



