264 IN THE FOREST. 



around them. When she went and kindly begged some 

 for me, they gave her five ears only. They were subjects 

 of her uncle ; and, had they been Makololo, would have 

 been lavish in their gifts to the niece of their chief. I 

 suspected that they were dependants of some of Shinte's 

 principal men, and had no power to part with the maize 

 of their masters. 



Each house of these hamlets has a palisade of thick 

 stakes around it, and the door is made to resemble the 

 rest of the stockade ; the door is never seen open ; when 

 the owner wishes to enter, he removes a stake or two, 

 squeezes his body in, then plants them again in their 

 places, so that an enemy coming in the night would find 

 it difficult to discover the entrance. These palisades 

 seem to indicate a sense of insecurity in regard to their 

 fellow-men ; for there are no wild beasts to disturb them ; 

 the bows and arrows have been nearly as efficacious in 

 clearing the country here, as guns have in the country 

 further south. This was a disappointment to us, for we 

 expected a continuance of the abundance of game in the 

 north, which we found when we first came up to the 

 confluence of the I v eeba and Leeambye. 



A species of the silver-tree of the Cape (Leucodendron 

 argenteum) is found in abundance in the parts through 

 which we have travelled since leaving Samoana's. As it 

 grows at a height of between two and three thousand feet 

 above the level of the sea, on the Cape Table Mountain, 

 and again on the northern slope of the Cashan Mountains, 

 and here at considerably greater heights (four thousand 

 feet), the difference of climate prevents the botanical 

 range being considered as affording a good approximation 

 to the altitude. The rapid flow of the Leeambye, which 

 once seemed to me evidence of much elevation of the 

 country from which it comes, I now found, by the boiling 

 point of water, was fallacious.* 



The forest became more dense as we went north. We 



* On examining this subject when I returned to Linyanti, I found 

 that, according to Dr. Arnott, a declivity of three inches per mile 

 gives a velocity in a smooth straight channel of three miles an hour. 

 The general velocity of the Zambesi is three miles and three quarters 

 per hour, though in the rocky parts it is sometimes as much as four 

 and a half. If, however, we make allowances for roughness of 

 bottom, bendings of channel, and sudden descents at cataracts, and 

 say the declivity is even seven inches per mile, those 800 miles 



