SAND RIVERS. 217 



illnesss of one of the Batoka men, who died. He had required to be carried 

 by his fellows for several days, and when his case became hopeless they wanted 

 to leave him alone to die ; but to such an inhuman proposal Livingstone could 

 not of course give his consent. Here one of the Batoka men deserted openly 

 to Mozinkwa, stating as his reason, that the Makololo had killed both his 

 father and his mother, and that he would not remain any longer with them. 



Towards the end of January they were again on their way ; and early 

 in February, as his men were almost in a state of nudity, Livingstone gave 

 two tusks for some calico, marked Lawrence Mills, Lowell, U.S. The clayey 

 soil and the sand-filled rivulets made their progress slow and difficult. The 

 sand rivers are water-courses in sandy bottoms, which are full during the 

 rainy seasons and dry at other times, although on digging a few feet into the 

 bed of the stream, water is found percolating on a stratum of clay. " This," 

 Livingstone says, " is the phenomenon which is dignified by the name of 

 rivers flowing underground." In trying to ford one of these sand rivers — -the 

 Zingesi — in flood, he says, " I felt thousands of particles of coarse sand 

 striking my legs, and the slight disturbance of our footsteps caused deep 

 holes to be made in the bed. The water . . . dug out the sand beneath 

 the feet in a second or two, and we were all sinking by that means so deep 

 that we were glad to relinquish the attempt to ford it before we got half way 

 over ; the oxen were carried away down to the Zambesi. These sand rivers 

 remove vast masses of disintegrated rock before it is fine enough to form soil. 

 The man who preceded me was only thigh deep, but the disturbance caused 

 by his feet made it breast deep for me. The stream of particles of gravel 

 which struck against my legs gave me the idea that the amount of matter 

 removed by every freshet must be very great. In most rivers where much 

 wearing is going on a person diving to the bottom may hear literally 

 thousands of stones knocking against each other. This attrition, being carried 

 on for hundreds of miles in different rivers, must have an effect greater than 

 if all the pestles and mortar mills of the world were grinding and wearing 

 away the rocks." 



The party were now in a district where a species of game-law exists. If 

 an elephant is killed by a stranger, or a man from a neighbouring village 

 living under another chief, the under half of the carcase belongs to the lord of 

 the soil, nor must the hunter commence to cut it up until the chief claiming 

 the half, or one of his headmen, is present. The hind leg of a buffalo, and a 

 large piece of an elephant must be given in like circumstances to the occupier 

 of the land on which they were grazing when shot. The number of rivulets 

 and rivers enable them to mark out their terrritory with great exactness. In 

 this district the huts are built on high stages in the gardens, as a protection 

 from the attacks of lions, hyenas and leopards. 



Before leaving the land of a chief named Nyampungo, who had enter- 

 d 1 



