Chap. XIII. CONFLUENCE OF CHOBE AND LEEAMBYE. 233 



nutritious and good, but, like many wild fruits of this country, 

 the fleshy parts require to be enlarged by cultivation : it is 

 nearly all stone. 



The course of the river we found to be extremely tortuous, — 

 so much so, indeed, as to carry us to all points of the compass 

 every dozen miles. Some of us walked from a bend at the 

 village of Morenii to another nearly due east of that point, in six 

 hours, while the canoes, going at more than double our speed, 

 took twelve to accomplish the voyage between the same two 

 places. And though the river is from thirteen to fifteen feet 

 in depth at its lowest ebb, and broad enough to allow a steamer 

 to ply upon it, the suddenness of the bendings would prevent 

 navigation ; but, should the country ever become civilised, the 

 Chobe would be a convenient natural canal. We spent forty- 

 two and a half hours, paddling at the rate of five miles an hour, 

 in coming from Linyanti to the confluence ; there we found a 

 dyke of amygdaloid lying across the Leeambye. 



This amygdaloid with analami and mesotype contains crystals, 

 which the water gradually dissolves, leaving the rock with a 

 worm-eaten appearance. It is curious to observe that the 

 water flowing over certain rocks, as in this instance, imbibes an 

 appreciable, though necessarily most minute, portion of the mi- 

 nerals they contain. The water of the Chobe up to this point 

 is of a dark mossy hue, but here it suddenly assumes a lighter 

 tint ; and wherever this light colour shows a greater amount of 

 mineral, there are not mosquitoes enough to cause serious an- 

 noyance to any except persons of very irritable temperaments. 



The large island called Mparia stands at the confluence. This 

 is composed of trap (zeolite, probably mesotype) of a younger age 

 than the deep stratum of tufa in which the Chobe has formed 

 its bed, for, at the point where they come together, the tufa has 

 been transformed into saccharoid limestone. 



The actual point of confluence of these two rivers, the Chobe 

 and the Leeambye, is ill defined, on account of each dividing 

 into several branches as they inosculate ; but when the w T hole 

 body of water collects into one bed, it is a goodly sight for one 

 who has spent many years in the thirsty south. Standing on 

 one bank, even the keen eye of the natives cannot detect whe- 

 ther two large islands, a few miles east of the junction, are 



