52 TREES OF THE DISTRICT. 



drink. These are about seven or eight feet deep, three or four 

 feet wide at the mouth, and gradually decrease till they are only 

 about a foot wide at the bottom. The mouth is an oblong square 

 (the only square thing made by the Bechuanas, for every thing 

 else is round), and the long diameter at the surface is about equal 

 to the depth. The decreasing width toward the bottom is in- 

 tended to make the animal wedge himself more firmly in by his 

 weight and struggles. The pitfalls are usually in pairs, with a 

 wall a foot thick left uncut between the ends of each, so that 

 if the beast, when it feels its fore legs descending, should try to 

 save itself from going in altogether by striding the hind legs, he 

 would spring forward and leap into the second with a force which 

 insures the fall of his whole body into the trap. They are cover- 

 ed with great care. All the excavated earth is removed to a dis- 

 tance, so as not to excite suspicion in the minds of the animals. 

 Reeds and grass are laid across the top ; above this the sand is 

 thrown, and watered so as to appear exactly like the rest of the 

 spot. Some of our party plumped into these pitfalls more than 

 once, even when in search of them, in order to open them to pre- 

 vent the loss of our cattle. If an ox sees a hole, he carefully 

 avoids it ; and old elephants have been known to precede the herd 

 and whisk off the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the way 

 down to the water. We have known instances in which the old 

 among these sagacious animals have actually lifted the young out 

 of the trap. 



The trees which adorn the banks are magnificent. Two enor- 

 mous baobabs (Adansonia digitata), or mowanas, grow near its 

 confluence with the lake where we took the observations for the 

 latitude (20° 20' S.). We were unable to ascertain the longi- 

 tude of the lake, as our watches were useless ; it may be between 

 22° and 23° E. The largest of the two baobabs was 76 feet in 

 girth. The palmyra appears here and there among trees not 

 met with in the south. The mokuchong, or moshoma, bears an 

 edible fruit of indifferent quality, but the tree itself would be a 

 fire specimen of arboreal beauty in any part of the world. The 

 trunk is often converted into canoes. The motsouri, which bears 

 a pink plum containing a pleasant acid juice, resembles an 

 orange-tree in its dark evergreen foliage, and a cypress in its 

 form. It was now winter-time, and we saw nothing of the flora. 



