Chap. XXVI. ANCIENT LAKES. 345 



around is very beautiful, and was once well peopled with 

 Batoka, who possessed enormous herds of cattle. They had 

 been, however, displaced by the Makololo, who made a foray 

 among them under Sebituane, and who obtained so many 

 cattle that they could not take any note of the herds of sheep 

 and goats. The tsetse has occasionally been brought by 

 buffaloes into districts where formerly cattle abounded. This 

 was the case here, and we were consequently obliged to travel 

 the first few stages by night, and were unable to detect the 

 nature of the country ; the path, however, seemed to lead 

 along the high bank of what may have been the ancient bed 

 of the Zambesi before the fissure was made. The Lekone 

 now winds in it, flowing back towards the centre of the 

 country, in an opposite direction to that of the main stream. 

 It was plain, then, that we were ascending as we went east- 

 ward, and I estimated the level of the lower portion of the 

 Lekone to be about 200 feet above that of the Zambesi at the 

 falls, and considerably more than the altitude of Linyanti ; 

 consequently, when the river flowed along this ancient bed, 

 instead of through the rent, the whole country between this 

 and the ridge beyond Libebe in the west, and between 17° 

 and 21° S. latitude, was one vast fresh- water lake. There is 

 abundant evidence of the existence of this lake ; the whole of 

 this space is paved with a bed of tufa, more or less soft, and, 

 wherever anteaters make deep holes in this ancient bottom, 

 fresh-water shells are thrown out identical with those now 

 existing in the lake Ngami and the Zambesi. The Barotse 

 valley was another lake of a similar nature ; a third existed 

 beyond Masiko ; and a fourth near the Orange river. The 

 whole of these lakes were drained by means of fissures made 

 in their sides by the upheaval of the country. The fissure 

 made at the Victoria Falls let out the water of this great 

 valley, and left a small patch, the present lake Xgami, in 

 what was probably its deepest portion. The Falls of Gonye 

 furnished an outlet to the lake of the Barotse valley, and so of 

 the other great lakes of remote times. In the west the Congo 

 and the Orange river find their way to the sea through 

 narrow fissures ; while in the east, rents, such as those at the 

 Victoria Falls and to the east of Tanganyenka, allow the 

 central waters to escape in that direction. All the African 



