838 REMAINS OF ANTIQUITY. 



joa under Mosisinyane, and, last of all, a small party of 

 Bashubia and Barotse under Tuba Mokoro, wbich had been 

 furnished by Sekeletu because of their ability to swim. 

 They carried their paddles with them, and, as the Makololo 

 suggested, were able to swim over the rivers by night and 

 steal canoes if the inhabitants should be so unreasonable 

 as to refuse to lend them. These different parties assorted 

 together into messes : any orders were given through their 

 head-man, and when food was obtained he distributed it to 

 the mess. Each party knew its own spot in the encamp 

 ment ; and, as this was always placed so that our backs 

 should be to the east, the direction from whence the pre- 

 vailing winds came, no time was lost in fixing the sheds of 

 our encampment. They each took it in turn to pull grass 

 to make my bed ; so I lay luxuriously. 



November 26. — As the oxen could only move at night, in 

 consequence of a fear that the buffaloes in this quarter 

 might have introduced the tsetse, I usually performed the 

 march by day on foot, while some of the men brought on 

 the oxen by night. On coming to the villages under 

 Marimba, an old man, we crossed the Unguesi, a rivulet 

 which, like the Lekone, runs backward. It falls into the 

 Leeambye a little above the commencement of the rapids. 



We passed the remains of a very large town, which, from 

 the only evidence of antiquity afforded by ruins in thid 

 country, must have been inhabited for a long jjeriod : the 

 millstones of gneiss, trap, and quartz were worn down two 

 and a half inches perpendicularly. The ivory gravestones 

 soon rot away. Those of Moyara's father, who must have 

 died not more than a dozen years ago, were crumbling into 

 powder ; and we found this to be generally the case all 

 over the Batoka country. The region around is pretty 

 well covered with forest ; but there is abundance of open 

 pasturage, and, as we are ascending in altitude, we find 

 the grass to be short and altogether unlike the tangled 

 herbage of the Barotse valley. 



