SAND KTVERS. 255 



In latitude 15° 38' 34" south, longitude 31° V east, on the 

 1st of February, they crossed the Zingesi, one of the sand-rivu- 

 lets which constitute quite a feature of the country. It was in 

 flood at that time and flowed along quite waist-deep. These 

 sand-rivers are the agencies which have probably had much to 

 do in the changes which are manifestly occurring in the face of 

 the country continually. In trying to ford this stream Dr. 

 Livingstone felt thousands of particles of coarse sand beating 

 against his legs. These rivers remove vast quantities of disin- 

 tegrated rock before it has time enough to form soil, and one 

 diving below the surface may hear thousands of tiny stones 

 knocking against each other continually. And we can readily 

 believe that " this attrition, carried on for hundreds of miles in 

 different rivers, must have an effect greater than if all the 

 pestles and mortars and mills of the world were grinding and 

 wearing away the rocks." 



The general order was somewhat interrupted by the " game 

 laws " which protected the animal kingdom. The lands of each 

 chief are very well defined, the boundaries being usually marked 

 by rivulets, great numbers of which flow into the Zambesi from 

 both banks, and if an elephant is wounded on one man's land 

 and dies on that of another, the under half of the carcass is 

 claimed by the lord of the soil ; and so stringent is the law, that 

 the hunter cannot begin at once to cut up his own elephant, but 

 must send notice to the lord of the soil on which it lies, and 

 wait until that personage sends one authorized to see a fair 

 partition made. If the hunter should begin to cut up before 

 the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose both the 

 tusks and all the flesh. The hind leg of a buffalo must also be 

 given to the man on whose land the animal was grazing, and 

 a still larger quantity of the eland, which here and everywhere 

 else in the country is esteemed right royal food. 



If these laws had been met here for the first time, Living- 

 stone would probably have considered them a sort of tax on the 

 traveller for passing through another's country, but they are 

 found far in the south. In the interior too there are game laws, 

 though not exactly such as these. The man who first wounds 

 an animal, though he has inflicted but a mere scratch, is con- 

 sidered the killer of it ; the second is entitled to a hind quarter, 

 13 



