FRUITS — RAPIDS. 221 



having a sweet acidulous taste. The fruit itself resembles 

 a large yellow orange, but the rind is hard, and, with the 

 pips and bark, contains much of the deadly poison. 

 They evince their noxious qualities by an intensely bitter 

 taste. The nuts, swallowed inadvertently, cause con- 

 siderable pain, but not death ; and to avoid this incon- 

 venience, the people dry the pulp before the fire, in order 

 to be able the more easily to get rid of the noxious seeds. 



A much better fruit, called mobola, was also presented 

 to us. This bears, around a pretty large stone, as much 

 of the fleshy part as the common date, and it is stripped 

 off the seeds and preserved in bags in a similar manner 

 to that fruit. Besides sweetness, the mobola has the 

 flavour of strawberries, with a touch of nauseousness. 

 We carried some of them, dried as provisions, more than a 

 hundred miles from this spot. 



The next fruit, named mamosho (mother of morning), 

 is the most delicious of all. It is about the size of a walnut, 

 and, unlike most of the other uncultivated fruits, has a 

 seed no larger than that of a date. The fleshy part is 

 juicy, and somewhat like the cashew-apple, with a pleasant 

 acidity added. Fruits similar to those which are here 

 found on trees are found on the plains of the Kalahari, 

 growing on mere herbaceous plants. There are several 

 other examples of a similar nature. Shrubs, well known 

 as such in the south, assume the rank of trees as we go to 

 the north ; and the change is quite gradual as our latitude 

 decreases, the gradations being herbaceous plants, shrubs, 

 bushes, small, then large, trees. But it is questionable if, 

 in the cases of mamosho, mabola, and mawa, the tree and 

 shrub are identical, though the fruits so closely resemble 

 each other ; for I found both the dwarf and tree in the 

 same latitude. There is also a difference in the leaves, 

 and they bear at different seasons. 



The banks of the river were at this time appearing to 

 greater advantage than before. Many trees were putting 

 on their fresh green leaves, though they had got no rain, 

 their lighter green contrasting beautifully with the dark 

 motsouri, or moyela, now covered with pink plums as large 

 as cherries. The rapids having comparatively little water 

 in them, rendered our passage difficult. The canoes must 

 never be allowed to come broadside on to the stream, for, 

 being flat-bottomed, they would, in that case, be at once 

 capsized, and everything in them be lost. The men work 



