Chap. VII. MOSHOBOTWANE. 175 



the missionaries and their native attendants, from Kuru- 

 man, had succumbed to the fever, and the survivors had 

 retired some weeks before our arrival. We remained the 

 whole of the 7th beside the village of the old Batoka 

 chief, Moshobotwane, the stoutest man we have seen in 

 Africa. The cause of our delay here was a severe attack 

 of fever in Charles Livingstone. ^He took a dose of our 

 fever pills ; was better on the 8th, and marched three 

 hours ; then on the 9th marched eight miles to the Great 

 Falls, and spent the rest of the day in the fatiguing exer- 

 cise of sight-seeing. We were in the very same valley as 

 Linyanti, and this was the same fever which treated, or 

 rather maltreated, with only a little Dover's powder, proved 

 so fatal to poor Helmore ; the symptoms, too, were identi- 

 cal with those afterwards described by non-medical persons 

 as those of poison. 



We gave Moshobotwane a present, and a pretty plain 

 exposition of what we thought of his bloody forays among 

 his Batoka brethren. A scolding does most good to the 

 recipient, when put alongside some obliging act. He 

 certainly did not take it ill, as was evident from what he 

 gave us in return ; which consisted of a liberal supply of 

 meal, milk, and an ox. He has a large herd of cattle, and 

 a tract of fine pasture-land on the beautiful stream Lekone. 

 A home-feeling comes over one, even in the interior of 

 Africa, at seeing once more cattle grazing peacefully in 

 the meadows. The tsetse inhabits the trees which bound 

 the pasture-land on the west; so, should the herdsman 

 forget his duty, the cattle straying might be entirely lost. 

 The women of this village were more numerous than the 

 men, the result of the chiefs marauding. The Batoko 

 wife of Sima came up from the Falls, to welcome her 

 husband back, bringing a present of the best fruits of the 

 country. Her husband was the only one of the party who 

 had brought a wife from Tette, namely, the girl whom he 



