I/ISCGVES.T OP THE ZAMBESI. 65 



there at all. The Portuguese maps all represent it as 

 rising far to the east of where we now were ; and, if evei 

 any thing like a chain of trading-stations had existed 

 across the country between the latitudes 12° and 18° south, 

 this magnificent portion of the river must have been 

 known before. We saw it at the end of the dry season, at 

 the time when the river is about at its lowest; and yet 

 there was a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred 

 yards of deep, flowing water. Mr. Oswell said he had 

 never seen such a fine river even in India. At the period 

 of its annual inundation it rises fully twenty feet in per- 

 pendicular height, and floods fifteen or twenty miles of 

 lands adjacent to its banks. 



Occasionally the country between the Chobe and Zam- 

 besi is flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying 

 near the Chobe or on its banks. The Makololo were living 

 among these swamps for the sake of the protection the 

 deep reedy rivers afforded them against their enemies. 



Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement 

 for myself, I could not conscientiously ask them to aban- 

 don their defences for my convenience alone. The health} 

 districts were defenceless, and the safe localities were so 

 deleterious to human life that the original Basutos had 

 nearly all been cut off by the fever : I therefore feared t<? 

 hubject my family to the scourge. 



As there was no hope of the Boers allowing the peace 

 able instruction of the natives at Kolobeng, I at once re 

 solved to save my family from exposure to this unhealthy 

 region by sending them to England, and to return alone, 

 with a view to exploring the country in search of a 

 healthy district that might prove a centre of civilization 

 and open up the interior by a path to either the east or 

 west coast. This resolution led me down to the Cape in 

 April, 1852, being the first time during eleven vears that 1 

 had visited the scenes of civilization. Our route to Cape 

 Town led us to pass through the centre "»f the colony 

 during the twentieth month of a Caffre war; a.ud if those 



