THE CHOBE AND LEEAMBYE. 21 7 



The fruit of the last-named was ripe, and the villagers 

 presented many dishes of its beautiful pink-coloured 

 plums ; they are used chiefly to form a pleasant acid 

 drink. The motsintsela is a very lofty tree, yielding 

 a wood of which good canoes are made ; the fruit is 

 nutritious and good, but, like many wild fruits of this 

 country, the fleshy parts require to be enlarged by cultiva- 

 tion : it is nearly all stone. 



The course of the river we found to be extremely 

 tortuous, — so much so, indeed, as to carry us to all points 

 of the compass every dozen miles. Some of us walked 

 from a bend at the village of Moremi to another nearly 

 due east of that point, in six hours, while the canoes, 

 going at more than double our speed, took twelve to 

 accomplish the voyage between the same two places. 

 And though the river is from thirteen to fifteen feet in 

 depth at its lowest ebb, and broad enough to allow a 

 steamer to ply upon it, the suddenness of the bendings 

 would prevent navigation ; but, should the country ever 

 become civilised, the Chobe would be a convenient natural 

 canal. We spent forty-two and a half hours, paddling at 

 the rate of five miles an hour, in coming from Linyanti to 

 the confluence ; there we found a dyke of amygdaloid 

 lying across the Leeambye. 



This amygdaloid with analami and mesotype contains 

 crystals, which the water gradually dissolves, leaving the 

 rock with a worm-eaten appearance. It is curious to 

 observe that the water flowing over certain rocks, as in 

 this instance, imbibes an appreciable, though necessarily 

 most minute, portion of the minerals they contain. The 

 water of the Chobe up to this point is of a dark mossy hue, 

 but here it suddenly assumes a lighter tint ; and where- 

 ever this light colour shows a greater amount of mineral^ 

 there are not mosquitoes enough to cause serious annoy- 

 ance to any except persons of very irritable temperaments. 



The large island called Mparia stands at the confluence. 

 This is composed of trap (zeolite, probably mesotype) of 

 a younger age than the deep stratum of tufa in which the 

 Chobe has formed its bed, for, at the point where they come 

 together, the tufa has been transformed into saccharoid 

 limestone. 



The actual point of confluence of these two rivers, the 

 Chobe and the Leeambye, is ill defined, on account of each 

 dividing into several branches as they inosculate ; but 



