212 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D 



have formed them. Close to the confluence of the Kafue there is a forest of 

 silicified trees, many of which are five feet in diameter; and all along the 

 Zambesi to this place, where the rock appears, fragments of silicified wood 

 abound. I got a piece of palm, the pores filled with silica, and the woody 

 parts with oxide of iron. I imagined it was one of the old bottom rocks, 

 because I never could see a fossil in it in the valley ; but at and about Tete I 

 found it overlying beds of coal 1" 



As buffaloes and elephants were plentiful, one was now and again shot, so 

 that the party seldom wanted flesh meat. A party of his men on one occasion 

 slaughtered a female elephant and her calf with their spears, native fashion. 

 The mother had much the appearance of a huge porcupine, from the number 

 of spears sticking into her flesh when she fell exhausted by the loss of 

 blood. This was a needlessly cruel method of recruiting their stores of food, 

 and Livingstone did not encourage it ; although he found shooting the larger 

 game for food both trying and hazardous, as he could make little use of 

 the arm which had been fractured by the lion when among the Bakwains. 

 His skill was very much impaired, and was provokingly enough at its lowest 

 ebb when meat was most wanted. 



" I never before saw," he says in one of his letters, " elephants so nume- 

 rous or so tame as at the confluence of the Kafue and Zambesi. Buffaloes, 

 zebras, pigs, and hippopotami, were equally so, and it seemed as if we had 

 got back to the time when megatheriae roamed about undisturbed by man. 

 We had to shout to them to get out of the way, and then their second thoughts 

 were — 'It's a trick.' 'We're surrounded' — and back they came, tearing 

 through our long-extended line. Lions and hysenas are so numerous that all 

 the huts in the gardens are built on trees, and the people never go half a mile 

 into the woods alone." 



They had now got into a district where rains were frequent, and so much 

 had they been spoiled by the beautiful dry weather and fine open country 

 they had passed through, that at first, as he has told us above, they invariably 

 stopped and took shelter when it fell. 



It was on the 18th December they reached the Kafue, the largest tributary 

 of the Zambesi they had yet seen. It was about two hundred yards broad, and 

 full of hippopotami. Here they reached the village of Semalembue, who made 

 them a present of thirty baskets of meal and maize, and a large quantity of 

 ground nuts. On Dr. Livingstone explaining that he had little to give in re- 

 turn for the chief's handsome gift, he accepted his apologies politely, saying 

 that he knew there were no goods in the country from which he had come. He 

 professed great joy at the words of peace which Livingstone addressed to him, 

 and said, " Now I shall cultivate largely, in the hope of eating and sleeping 

 in peace." The preaching of the gospel amongst these people gave them the 

 idea of living at peace with one another as one of its effects. It was not 



