TREES AND ANIMALS. 6 1 



ascertain the longitude of the lake, as our watches were 

 useless ; it may be between 2 2° and 23 E. The largest 

 of the two baobabs was y6 feet in girth. The palmyra 

 appears here and there among trees not met with in the 

 south. The mokuchong or moshoma bears an edible fruit 

 of indifferent quality, but the tree itself would be a fine 

 specimen of arboreal beauty in any part of the world. The 

 trunk is often converted into canoes. The motsouri, which 

 bears a pink plum containing a pleasant acid juice, resem- 

 bles an orange-tree in its dark evergreen foliage, and a 

 cypress in its form. It was now winter-time, and we saw 

 nothing of the flora. The plants and bushes were dry ; 

 but wild indigo abounded, as indeed it does over large 

 tracts of Africa. It is called mohetolo, or the " changer," 

 by the boys, who dye their ornaments of straw with the 

 juice. There are two kinds of cotton in the country, and 

 the Mashona, who convert it into cloth, dye it blue with 

 this plant. 



We found the elephants in prodigious numbers on the 

 southern bank. They come to drink by night, and after 

 having slaked their thirst — in doing which they throw 

 large quantities of water over themselves, and are heard, 

 while enjoying the refreshment, screaming with delight — 

 they evince their horror of pitfalls by setting off in a straight 

 line to the desert, and never diverge- till they are eight or 

 ten miles off. They are smaller here than in the countries 

 further south. At ■ the Limpopo, for instance, they are 

 upwards of twelve feet high ; here, only eleven : further 

 north we shall find them nine feet only. The koodoo, or 

 tolo, seemed smaller too than those we had been accus- 

 tomed to see. We saw specimens of the kuabaoba, or 

 straight-horned rhinoceros (R. Oswellii), which is a variety 

 of the white (R. simus) ; and we found that, from the horn 

 being projected downwards, it did not obstruct the line of 

 vision ; so that this species is able to be much more wary 

 than its neighbours. 



We discovered an entirely new species of antelope, called 

 leche or lechwi. It is a beautiful water-antelope of a light 

 brownish-yellow colour. Its horns — exactly like those of 

 the Aigoceros ellipsiprimnus, the water-buck, or tumoga of 

 the Bechuanas — rise from the head with a slight bend 

 backwards, then curve forwards at the points. The chest, 

 belly, and orbits are nearly white, the front of the legs and 

 ankles deep brown. From the horns, along the nape to 



