DISCOVERY OF THE ZAMBESI. 105 



all represent it as rising far to the east of where we now were ; and 

 if ever any thing like a chain of trading stations had existed across 

 the country between the latitudes 12° and 18° south, this mag- 

 nificent 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 ad- 

 jacent to its banks. 



The country over which we had traveled from the Chobe was 

 perfectly flat, except where there were large ant-hills, or the 

 remains of former ones, which had left mounds a few feet high. 

 These are generally covered with wild date-trees and palmyras, 

 and in some parts there are forests of mimosas and mopane. Oc- 

 casionally the country between the Chobe and Zambesi 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 abandon their 

 defenses for my convenience alone. The healthy districts were 

 defenseless, 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 to subject my family to the scourge. 



As we were the very first white men the inhabitants had ever 

 seen, we were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first 

 who came to see us was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy 

 dressing-gown of printed calico. Many of the Makololo, besides, 

 had garments of blue, green, and red baize, and also of printed 

 cottons ; on inquiry, we learned that these had been purchased, in 

 exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari, which is situated 

 near Bihe. This tribe began the slave-trade with Sebituane only 

 in 1850, and but for the unwillingness of Lechulatebe to allow 

 us to pass, we should have been with Sebituane in time to have 

 prevented it from commencing at all. The Mambari visited in 

 ancient times the chief of the Barotse, whom Sebituane con- 



