l8o SHIELDS AND SPEARS. 



rigid and not liable to bend easily. The shield is a great 

 protection in their way of righting with spears, but they 

 also trust largely to their agility in springing aside from 

 the coming javelin. The shield assists when so many 

 spears are thrown that it is impossible not to receive some 

 of them. Their spears are light javelins ; and, judging 

 from what I have seen them do in elephant-hunting, I 

 believe, when they have room to make a run and discharge 

 them with the aid of the jerk of stopping, they can throw 

 them between forty and fifty yards. They give them an 

 upward direction in the discharge, so that they come down 

 on the object with accelerated force. I saw a man who 

 in battle had received one in the shin ; the excitement of 

 the moment prevented his feeling any pain ; but, when 

 the battle was over, the blade was found to have split the 

 bone, and become so impacted in the cleft that no force 

 could extract it. It was necessary to take an axe and press 

 the split bone asunder before the weapon could be taken 

 out. 



CHAPTER X. 



On the 30th of May I was seized with fever for the first 

 time. We reached the town of Linyanti on the 23rd ; 

 and as my habits were suddenly changed from great 

 exertion to comparative inactivity, at the commencement 

 of the cold season I suffered from a severe attack of stop- 

 page of the secretions, closely resembling a common cold. 

 Warm baths and drinks relieved me, and I had no idea but 

 that I was now recovering from the effects of a chill, got 

 by leaving the warm waggon in the evening in order to 

 conduct family -worship at my people's fire. But on the 

 2nd of June a relapse showed to the Makololo, who knew 

 the complaint, that my indisposition was no other than 

 the fever, with which I have since made a more intimate 

 acquaintance. Cold east winds prevail at this time ; 

 and as they come over the extensive flats inundated by 

 the Chobe, as well as many other districts where pools of 

 rain-water are now drying up, they may be supposed to be 

 loaded with malaria and watery vapour, and many cases 



