198 FAI,I£ AND ROCKS. 



must always be dangerous. The fall at each of these is 

 between four and six feet. But the falls of Gonye present 

 a much more serious obstacle. There we were obliged to 

 take the canoes out of the water, and carry them more 

 than a mile by land. The fall is about thirty feet. The 

 main body of water, which comes over the ledge of rock 

 when the river is low, is collected into a space seventy or 

 eighty yards wide before it takes the leap, and, a mass of 

 rock being thrust forward against the roaring torrent, a 

 loud sound is produced. Tradition reports the destruc- 

 tion in this place of two hippopotamus-hunters, who, over 

 eager in the pursuit of a wounded animal, were, with their 

 intended prey, drawn down into the frightful gulf. There 

 is also a tradition of a man, evidently of superior mind, 

 who left his own countrymen, the Barotse, and came 

 down the river, took advantage of the falls, and led out a 

 portion of the water there for irrigation. Such minds 

 must have arisen from time to time in these regions, as 

 well as in our own country, but, ignorant of the use of 

 letters, they have left no memorial behind them. We dug 

 Out some of an inferior kind of potato (Sisinydne) from 

 his garden, for when once planted it never dies out. This 

 root is bitter and waxy, though it is cultivated. It was 

 not in flower, so I cannot say whether it is a solanaceous 

 plant or not. One never expects to find a grave nor a 

 stone of remembrance set up in Africa ; the very rocks 

 are illiterate, they contain so few fossils. Those here are 

 of reddish variegated hardened sandstone with madrepore- 

 holes in it. This, and broad horizontal strata of trap, 

 sometimes a hundred miles in extent, and each layer 

 having an inch or so of black silicious matter on it, as if 

 it had floated there while in a state of fusion, form a great 

 part of the bottom of the central valley. These rocks, in 

 the southern part of the country especially, are often 

 covered with twelve or fifteen feet of soft calcareous tufa. 

 At Bombwe we have the same trap, with radiated zeolite, 

 probably mesotype, and it again appears at the confluence 

 of the Chobe, further down. 



As we passed up the river, the different villages of 

 Banyeti turned out to present Sekeletu with food and 

 skins, as their tribute. One large village is placed at 

 Gonye, the inhabitants of which are required to assist the 

 Makololo to carry their canoes past the falls. The tsetse 

 here lighted on us even in the middle of the stream. 



