So DISCOVERY OF THE ZAMBESI. 



if ever anything like a chain of trading stations had existed 

 across the country between the latitudes 12 and 18 south, 

 this magnificent portion of the river must have been 

 known before. We saw it at the end of the dry season, 

 at the time when the river is about at its lowest, and yet 

 there was a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred 

 yards of deep flowing water. Mr. Oswell said he had never 

 seen such a fine river, even in India. At the period, of its 

 annual inundation it rises fully twenty feet in perpendicu- 

 lar height, and floods fifteen or twenty miles of lands 

 adjacent to its banks. 



The country over which we had travelled from the 

 Chobe was perfectly flat, except where there were large 

 ant-hills, or the remains of former ones, which had left 

 mounds a few feet high. These are generally covered. 

 with wild date -trees and palmyras, and in some parts 

 there are forests of mimosae and mopane. Occasionally 

 the country between the Chobe and Zambesi is flooded, 

 and there are large patches of swamps lying near the Chobe, 

 or on its banks. The Makololo were living among these 

 swamps for the sake of the protection the deep reedy 

 rivers afforded them against their enemies. 



Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement 

 for myself, I could not conscientiously ask them to abandon 

 their defences for my convenience alone. The healthy 

 districts were defenceless, and the safe localities were so 

 deleterious to human life, that the original Basutos had 

 nearly all been cut off by the fever ; I therefore feared 

 to subject my family to the scourge. 



As we were the very first white men the inhabitants had 

 -ever seen, we were visited by prodigious numbers. Among 

 the first who came to see us was a gentleman who appeared 

 in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico. Many of the 

 Makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red 

 baize, and also of printed cottons ; on inquiry, we learned 

 that these had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from 

 a tribe called Mambari, which is situated near Bine. 

 This tribe began the slave-trade with Sebituane only in 

 1850, and, but for the unwillingness of Lechulatebe to 

 allow us to pass, we should have been with Sebituane in 

 time to have prevented it from commencing at all. The 

 Mambari visited in ancient times the chief of the Barotse, 

 whom Sebituane conquered, and he refused to allow any 

 ■one to sell a child. They never came back again till 



