Chap, IT. KEBRABASA RAPIDS. 53 



the produce was considerable. It is now insignificant. The gold- 

 producing lands have always been in the hands of independent 

 tribes. Deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding 

 streams seem never to have been tried here, as in California 

 and Australia, nor has any machinery been used save common 

 wooden basins for washing. 



Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we 

 had heard of the Kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make 

 a short examination of them, and seized the opportunity of 

 the Zambesi being unusually low, to endeavour to ascertain 

 their character while uncovered by the water. We reached 

 them on the 9th of November. The country, between Tette 

 and Panda Mokua, where navigation ends, is well wooded and 

 liilly on both banks. Panda Mokua is a hill two miles below 

 the rapids, capped with dolomite containing copper ore. 



Conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark 

 coloured exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Baobab. 

 It often makes the other trees of the forest look like mere 

 bushes in comparison. A hollow one, already mentioned, is 

 74 feet in circumference, another was 84, and some have been 

 found on the West Coast which measure 100 feet. Their great 

 size induced some to imagine that they afforded evidence 

 that the flood of Noah never took place. On careful exami- 

 nation of many hundreds in the forests, and some which 

 had sprung up in the floors of old stone houses, the num- 

 ber of concentric rings convince us that even the very 

 largest specimens of this remarkably soft-wooded tree are not 

 500 years old. The lofty range of Kebrabasa, consisting 

 chiefly of conical hills, covered with scraggy trees, crosses 

 the Zambesi, and confines it within a narrow, rough, and 

 rocky dell of about a quarter of a mile in breadth ; over this, 

 which may be called the flood-bed of the river, large masses 



