PREFATORY LETTER. lv 



■whenever they could, of any grass-devouring beast that fell 

 in their way. They were glad to eat a tough steak from 

 the rump of a zebra, when they could get nothing better; 

 they rejoiced over the carcass of an elephant; and they 

 swallowed, with delight, a fat slice from the flitch of a young 

 hippopotamus. Fat, in the language of the African, is the 

 word that describes everything that is good. The air was 

 filled with water-fowl, and out of them, had their ammunition 

 been more abundant, they could easily have secured a meal 

 for the whole party. " I never saw a river," he tells us, 

 "with so much animal life around it, and, as the Barotse 

 say, its fish and fowl are always fat." 



At length his eyes were gladdened by the sight of the 

 great river, and he found its waters of a dark reddish 

 brown colour — an impurity no doubt derived from the 

 neighbouring hills through which it and its tributaries had 

 worked their way. Above the Victoria Falls the waters of 

 the Zambesi are clear and colourless; and so are all its 

 branches, as above stated, which come soaking out of the 

 vast upland bogs. It appeared broader now than it did 

 above the falls. A man might in vain try to make his 

 voice heard across it; and it ran at the rate of four miles 

 and a half an hour. 



He is careful in his use of definite numbers ; and he 

 often cautions the reader while he is only guessing. Thus, 

 his latitudes were observed daily when the sun was visible. 

 His longitudes were given by the chronometer; but he 

 tested them by lunar observations whenever he had a good 

 opportunity. In like spirit, and always seeking for a 

 good numerical result, he made an approximation to the 

 full speed of the ostrich by counting its steps with his stop- 

 watch in hand ; and then — having by actual measurement 

 upon the sand, got the average length of each step — he 

 found that it could run, for a short time, at the rate of 

 twenty-six miles an hour. 



