ON TEE LEE AM BYE. 121 



submerges the whole valley, except the foundations of the huts, and 2 feet 

 more would sweep away the towns. This never happens, though among the 

 hills below the valley the river rises 60 feet, and then floods the lands adjacent 

 to Sesheke on both sides. The valley contains, as I said, a great number of 

 villages and cattle-stations. These, and large herds of cattle grazing on the 

 succulent herbage, meet the eye in every direction. On visiting the ridges, 

 we found them to be only the commencement of lands which are never 

 inundated: these are covered with trees and abound in fruitful gardens, in 

 which are cultivated sugar-cane, sweet potato, two kinds of manioc, two kinds 

 of yam-bananas, millet, &c. Advantage is taken of the inundation to 

 raise large quantities of maize and Kaffre corn, of large grain and beautiful 

 whiteness. These, with abundance of milk and plenty of fish in the river, 

 make the people always refer to the Barotse country as the land of plenty. 

 No part of the country can be spoken of as salubrious. The fever must be 

 braved if a mission is to be established ; it is very fatal even among natives. 

 I have had eight attacks of it ; the last very severe : but I never laid by. I 

 tried native remedies in order to discover if they possessed any valuable 

 means of cure ; but after being stewed in vapour baths, smoked like a red 

 herring over fires of green twigs in hot potsherds, and physicked secundum 

 Hack artem, I believe that our own medicines are safer and more efficacious. 

 I have not relinquished the search, and as I make it a rule to keep on good terms 

 with my professional brethren, I am not without hope that some of their 

 means of re-establishing the secretions (and to this, indeed, all their efforts are 

 directed) may be well adapted for this complaint. 



" I did not think it my duty to go towards Mosioatunya, for though a 

 hilly country, the proximity to Moselekatse renders it impossible for the 

 Makololo to live there ; but I resolved to know the whole Barotse country 

 before coming to the conclusion now reached that the ridge East of Nailele is 

 the only part of the country that can be fixed on for a mission. I therefore 

 left Sekeletu's party at Nailele, the Barotse capital, and went northwards. 

 The river presents the same appearance of low banks, without trees, till we 

 come to 14° 38' lat. Here again it is forest to the water's edge, and tsetse. I 

 might have turned now ; but the river Londa, or Leeba, comes from the 

 capital of a large state of the former name, and the chief being reported 

 friendly to foreigners, if I succeed in reaching the West coast, and am per- 

 mitted to return by this river, it will be water- conveyance for perhaps two- 

 thirds of the way. We went, therefore, to the confluence of the Leeba or 

 Londa (not Lonta as we have written it) with the Leeambye : it is in 

 14° 11' South. The Leeba comes from the North and by West or N.N.W. ; 

 while the Leeambye there abruptly quits its northing and comes from the 

 E.N.E. (The people pointed as its course due East. Are the Maninche or 

 Bashukulompo river and Leeambye not one river, dividing and meeting again 

 R 



