120 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



sky. The banks are rocky and undulating ; many villages of Kanyeti, a poor 

 but industrious people, are situated on both of them. They are expert hunters 

 of hippopotami and other animals, and cultivate grain extensively. At the 

 bend of Katima Molelo the bottom of the river bed begins to be rocky, and 

 continues so the whole way to about lat. 16°, forming a succession of rapids and 

 cataracts, which are dangerous when the river is low. The rocks are of hard 

 sandstone and porphyritic basalt. The rapids are not visible when the river 

 is full ; but the cataracts of Kale Bombwe and Nambwe are always dangerous. 

 The fall of them is from 4 to 6 feet in perpendicular height ; but the cataracts 

 of Gronye (hard by) excel them all. The main fall of these is over a straight 

 ledge of rock, about 60 or 70 yards long and 40 feet deep. 



" Tradition reports the destruction in this place of two hippopotami hunters, 

 who, too eager in the pursuit of a wounded animal, were with their prey drawn 

 down into the frightful gulf. We also digged some yams in what was said to have 

 been the garden of a man, who of old came down the river and led out a portion 

 of it here for irrigation. Superior minds must have risen from time to time in 

 these regions, but ignorant of the use of letters, they have left no memorial. 

 One never sees a grave nor a stone of remembrance set up. The very rocks 

 are illiterate ; they contain no fossils. All these beautiful and rocky parts of 

 the valley of the river are covered with forest, and infested with the tsetse fly ; 

 but in other respects the country seems well adapted for a residence. When, 

 however, we come to the northern confines of lat. 16°, the tsetse suddenly 

 ceases, and the high banks seem to leave the river and to stretch away in 

 ridges of about 300 feet high to the N.N.E. and N.N.W., until between 20 

 and 30 miles apart ; the intervening space, 100 miles in length, is the Barotse 

 country proper : it is annually inundated not by rains but by the river, as 

 Lower Egypt is by the Nile, and one portion of this comes from the North- 

 west and another from the North. There are no trees in this valley, except 

 such as were transplanted for the sake of shade by the chief Santuru ; but it 

 is covered with coarse succulent grasses, which are the pasturage of large 

 herds of cattle during a portion of the year. One of these species of grass 

 is 12 feet high, and as thick as a man's thumb. The villages and towns are 

 situated on mounds, many of which were constructed artificially. 



" I have not put down all the villages that I visited, and many were seen at a 

 distance; but there are no large towns, for the mounds on which alone towns and 

 villages are built are all small, and the people require to live separate on account 

 of their cattle. Nailele, the capital of the Barotse country, does not contain 

 1,000 inhabitants ; the site of it was constructed artificially. It was not the an- 

 cient capital. The river now flows over the site of that, and all that remains of 

 what had cost the people of Santuru the labour of many years, is a few cubic 

 yards of earth. As the same thing has happened to another ancient site, the 

 river seems wearing eastwards. Ten feet of rise above low-water mark 



