YIT AUT Y OF THE MOW ANA TREE. 1 49 



and allowed to perish miserably, or are killed on the spot 

 and left to be preyed on by vultures and hyaenas, and all 

 for the sole purpose of making a " bag," then 1 take it to 

 be evident that such sportsmen are pretty far gone in the 

 hunting form of insanity. 



My men shot a black rhinoceros in this way, and I felt 

 glad to get away from the only place in which I ever had 

 any share in night-hunting. We passed over the immense 

 pan Ntwetwe, on which the latitude could be taken as at 

 sea. Great tracts of this part of the country are of 

 calcareous tufa, with only a thin coating of soil ; numbers 

 of " baobab " and " mopane " trees abound all over this 

 hard smooth surface. About two miles beyond the 

 northern bank of the pan we unyoked under a fine speci- 

 men of the baobab, here called, in the language of Bechu- 

 anas, Mowana ; it consisted of six branches united into 

 one trunk. At three feet from the ground it was eighty- 

 five feet in circumference. 



These mowana-trees are the most wonderful examples 

 of vitality in the country ; it was therefore with surprise 

 that we came upon a dead one at Tlomtla, a few miles 

 beyond this spot. It is the same as those which Adanson 

 and others believed," from specimens seen in Western 

 Africa, to have been alive before the flood. Arguing with 

 a peculiar mental idiosyncrasy resembling colour-blind- 

 ness, common among the French at the time, these savans 

 came to the conclusion that " therefore there never was 

 any flood at all." I would back a true mowana against a 

 dozen floods, provided you do not boil it in hot sea-water ; 

 but I cannot believe that any of those now alive had a 

 chance of being subjected to the experiment of even the 

 Koachian deluge. The natives make a strong cord from 

 the fibres contained in the pounded bark. The whole of 

 the trunk, as high as they can reach, is consequently often 

 quite denuded of its covering, which in the case of almost 

 any other tree would cause its death, but this has no 

 effect on the mowana except to make it throw out a new 

 bark, which is done in the way of granulation. This 

 stripping of the bark is repeated frequently, so that it is 

 common to see the lower five or six feet an inch or two 

 less in diameter than the parts above ; even portions of 

 the bark which have broken in the process of being 

 taken off, but remain separated from the parts below, 

 though still connected with the tree above, continue to 



