A MARSH SCENE. 377 



first furnished the desired hunting ground for the Tete men. . . The 

 whole country was laid waste, tribe was set against tribe, the strong sided 

 with the strong against the weak, the captives were bought at a price varying 

 from two to five yards of calico a-piece, and the population had thus become 

 exterminated in the hills." 



Two years previous to the visit of Mr. Young's party, the Zambesi and 

 its tributaries had come down in unusual flood — the former river forcing a 

 passage for the bulk of its waters across country to the Shire, which they 

 reached twenty miles from its mouth. Two guides having been procured who 

 were acquainted with the new channel, Mr. Young determined to pass through 

 it to the Shire. Once fairly into the channel the perils of its navigation 

 presented themselves when it was too late to turn back. " Our boats," Mr. 

 Young says, "were hurried along like leaves in a mill race, and to stop was 

 impossible. The first part lay through trees, and the danger of being dashed 

 against ' snags' was every moment recurring. There was nothing to do but 

 ' carry on,' although it felt more like being in a railway train than a boat : 

 once only did we receive a bad bump, and most fortunately it neither capsized 

 nor stove us. This headlong career kept on till we made a large open space, 

 and we were very glad to cast anchor on a sandbank for the night." 



The channel widened into a marsh, through which the navigation was 

 most intricate and difficult. The abundance of animal and plant life in this 

 marsh called forth his admiration and wonder : — 



" The plentiful supply of water, the rank vegetation for cover and food, 

 and the patches of forest, afford all that the antelope tribe and the large game 

 of Africa require. Elephants, rhinoceros, and buffalo, are very plentiful, 

 whilst water-buck, zebra, and numerous other animals, stray about in mixed 

 herds. . . Acres of azure-blue lilies hide the water in places, and for the 

 moment deceive the eye which has acknowledged, day by day, the similar 

 hue above. Hollyhocks and convolvuli are amongst the reeds ; the palm 

 tree's stateliness, and the acacia's blossom, are things that fix themselves in 

 the mind ; the mists are whiter, the cries of the birds wilder, the largeness 

 larger, and the stillness of the dawn more still upon these lagoons than any- 

 where else. All nature by concert seems to acknowledge the reign of stillness, 

 knowing that sound travels so easily and swiftly over water and through white 

 fog. Rarely is silence broken, and then only by sounds which utter allegiance 

 to the scene. It is the lion's roar before the dawn, the hippopotamus' trumpet 

 vibrating over the glassy expanse of water as day breaks, and the shriek as 

 from another world of the fish-hawk — these sounds are allowable and allowed 

 in the Shire marshes. The report of a gun is sacrilege ; a bird's song would 

 be destruction. By the pools stand white ghostly-looking bitterns, bleached 

 for night, whose very lustreless eyes seem swollen to perpetual silence : they 

 rise from the sedge in flakes ; they slide a few boat-lengths over the water, 

 y 1 



