A MISSION FIELD. 153 



inundation — the haughs or holms — are all flooded, though, as in the Barotse 

 valley, they may be more than 20 miles broad. The main body of the water 

 still flows in the now very deep low water bed, but the rivers look more like 

 chains of lakes than streams. The country between this and Sheseke was, 

 during the present year, nearly all under water. The parts which remained 

 dry are only a few feet above the general level, and canoes went regularly 

 from Linyanti to Sheseke, the distance being in a straight line more than 120 

 miles. It was an unusually wet year, and the plains are not yet free from 

 large patches of stagnant, foul-smelling water ; though we - expect the rains of 

 another season to begin during the present month. The inundation, if I may 

 judge from my own observation, is by no means partial. The exceptions are 

 where overtopping rocks form high banks, and there we have rapids and 

 cataracts, which impede navigation, and have probably been the barriers to 

 inland trade. When the supply of water from the north diminishes, the rivers 

 are confined to the low water channels, and even at their lowest are deep 

 enough to prevent invasion by enemies who cannot swim or manage canoes. 

 Numerous lakes, of considerable size, are left on the lately flooded meadows 

 by the retiring rivers, and these are either fringed with reeds or covered witb 

 mat rushes, papyrus plants, the Egyptian arum, the lotus, and other water- 

 loving plants. They are always drying up, but are never altogether dry ere 

 the next wet season begins. 



" The country over which the rivers never rise is nearly two hundred 

 feet higher than the holms. 



" The Inhabitants, their Accessibility to Christianity. 



" In regard to the people inhabiting this large and populous territory, it 

 is difficult in the absence of all numerical data to present a very precise idea. 

 The tribes are large, but divided into a great number of villages. So thickly 

 were these dotted over the country, that in travelling in a straight line in which 

 we could rarely see more than a mile on each side, we often passed ten or 

 twelve hamlets in a single day. Occasionally, however, we marched ten miles 

 without seeing any. In no part of the south I have visited is such a population 

 seen. Angola contains 600,000 souls, and Loanda seemed more populous and 

 of larger extent than it. The Cape Colony, with 200,000 souls, possesses some 

 hundreds of missions and other Christian instructors and schoolmasters, but it 

 will bear no comparison with Loanda as a missionary field. The Makololo 

 territory has several tribes — Batoka, Barotse, Bashubca, Banyeti, Makalaka, 

 &c. — and there is no impediment to immediate occupation by missionaries ; 

 and to such as aspire to the honour of being messengers of mercy to the actual 

 heathen, there is no more inviting field in South Africa. I am not to be 

 understood as meaning that any of these people are anxious for the Gospel. 

 They are quite unlike the intelligent inquiring race of the Punjaub, or the 



