96 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



with his people soon after the news of his death came, and they seemed to 

 take our remarks thankfully. We remained two months with them; they 

 are by far the most savage race of people we have seen, but they treated us 

 with uniform kindness, and would have been delighted had we been able to 

 remain with them permanently. Such was my intention when I left Kolo- 

 beng, and having understood that there were high lands in that region, to 

 avoid the loss of time which would occur in returning for my family, I 

 resolved that they should accompany me. The deep rivers among which they 

 now live, are a defence to them against the Matabele. To have removed them 

 to the high land would have been rendering them defenceless; and the country 

 itself was so totally different from anything I could have anticipated, I felt 

 convinced that two years alone in it, are required for the successful com- 

 mencement of a mission. It is for hundreds of miles intersected with 

 numerous rivers, and branches of rivers coming out of these and returning 

 into them again ; these are flanked with large reedy, boggy, tracts of country. 

 Where trees abound, if not on an island, the tsetse exists ; indeed we seem to 

 have reached the limits of waggon travelling. 



"We proceeded on horseback about one hundred miles further than 

 the place where the waggons stood to see the Sesheke or river of the 

 Barotse. It is from three hundred to five hundred yards broad, and 

 at the end of a remarkably dry season, had a very large volume of 

 water in it. The waves lifted the canoes and made them roll beauti- 

 fully, and brought back old scenes to my remembrance. The town of 

 Sesheke is on the opposite shore ; the river itself, as near as we could ascer- 

 tain by both instruments, IT 28' South. It overflows the country periodically 

 for fifteen miles out, contains a waterfall called Mosiatunya (smoke sounds), the 

 spray of which can be seen ten or fifteen miles off. The river of Bashukolompo 

 is about eighty yards wide, and when it falls into the Sesheke the latter is called 

 Zambesi. There are numerous rivers reported to connect the two, and all 

 along the rivers there exists a dense population of a strong black race. That 

 country abounds in corn and honey, and they show much more ingenuity in 

 iron work, basket work, and pottery, than any of the people south of them. 



" That which claims particular attention is the fact that the slave trade 

 only began in this region during 1850. A party of people called Mambari, from 

 the west, came to Sebituane bearing a large quantity of English printed and 

 striped cotton clothing, red, green, and blue baize of English manufacture, 

 and with these bought from the different towns about two hundred boys; they 

 had chains and rivets in abundance, and invited the people of Sebituane to go 

 a marauding expedition against the Bashukolompo by saying, you may take 

 all the cattle, we will only take the prisoners. On that expedition they met 

 with some Portuguese, and these gave them three English guns, receiving in 

 return at least thirty slaves. These Portuguese promised to return during 



