162 VITALITY OF THE MOWANA-TREE. Chap. VIII. 



evident that such sportsmen are pretty far gone in the hunting 

 form of insanity. 



My men shot a black rhinoceros in this way, and I felt glad to 

 get away from the only place in which I ever had any share in 

 night-hunting. We passed over the immense pan Ntwetwe, on 

 which the latitude could be taken as at sea. Great tracts of 

 this part of the country are of calcareous tufa, with only a thin 

 coating of soil ; numbers of " baobab " and " mopane " trees 

 abound all over this hard smooth surface. About two miles 

 beyond the northern bank of the pan we unyoked under a 

 fine specimen of the baobab, here called, in the language of 

 Bechuanas, Mowana ; it consisted of six branches united into one 

 trunk. At three feet from the ground it was eighty-five feet in 

 circumference. 



These mowana-trees are the most wonderful examples of vitality 

 in the country ; it was therefore with surprise that we came upon 

 a dead one at Tlomtla, a few miles beyond this spot. It is the 

 same as those which Adanson and others believed, from specimens 

 seen in Western Africa, to have been alive before the flood. 

 Arguing with a peculiar mental idiosyncracy resembling colour- 

 blindness, common among the French of the time, these savans 

 came to the conclusion that " therefore there never was any flood 

 at all." I would back a true mowana against a dozen floods, pro- 

 vided you do not boil it in hot sea- water ; but I cannot believe 

 that any of those now alive had a chance of being subjected to 

 the experiment of even the Noachian deluge. The natives make 

 a strong cord froni the fibres contained in the pounded bark. 

 The whole of the trunk, as high as they can reach, is consequently 

 often quite denuded of its covering, which in the case of almost 

 any other tree would cause its death, but this has no effect on the 

 mowana except to make it throw out a new bark, which is done 

 in the way of granulation. This stripping of the bark is repeated 

 frequently, so that it is common to see the lower five or six feet an 

 inch or two less in diameter than the parts above ; even portions of 

 the bark which have broken in the process of being taken off, but 

 remain separated from the parts below, though still connected with 

 the tree above, continue to grow, and resemble closely marks made 

 in the necks of the cattle of the island of Mull and of Caffre oxen, 

 where a piece of skin is detached and allowed to hang down. No 



