494 A NETWORK OF RIVERS. 



has to rise twenty or thirty feet before it can overflow 

 some of its meadows. The rivers have each a bed of 

 low water ; a simple furrow cut sharply out of the cal- 

 careous tufa, which lined the channel of the ancient lake ; 

 and another of inundation. When the beds of inundation 

 are rilled, they assume the appearance of chains of lakes. 

 When the Clyde fills the holms (" haughs ") above Both- 

 well Bridge and retires again into its channel, it resembles 

 the river we are speaking of, only here, there are no high 

 lands sloping down towards the bed of inundation, for the 

 greater part of the region is not elevated fifty feet above 

 them. Kven the rocky banks of the Leeambye below 

 Gonye, and the ridges bounding the Barotse valley, are 

 not more than two or three hundred feet in altitude over 

 the general dead level. Many of the rivers are very 

 tortuous in their course, the Chobe and Simah particularly 

 so ; and if we may receive the testimony of the natives, 

 they form what anatomists call anastamosis, or a network 

 of rivers. Thus, for instance, they assured me that, 

 if they go up the Simah in a canoe, they can enter the 

 Chobe and descend that river to the I^eeambye ; or they 

 may go up the Kama and come down the Simah. And 

 so in the case of the Kafue. It is reputed to be connected 

 in this way with the L,eeambye in the north, and to part 

 with the Loangwa ; and the Makololo went from the one, 

 into the other, in canoes. And even though the inter- 

 lacing may not be quite to the extent believed by the 

 natives, the country is so level and the rivers so tortuous, 

 that I see no improbability in the conclusion, that here 

 is a network of waters of a very peculiar nature. The 

 reason why I am disposed to place a certain amount of 

 confidence in the native reports is this, — when Mr. Oswell 

 and I discovered the Zambesi in the centre of the con- 

 tinent in 185 1, being unable to ascend it at the time 

 ourselves, we employed the natives to draw a map em- 

 bodying their ideas of that river. We then sent the native 

 map home with the same view that I now mention their 

 ideas of the river system — namely, in order to be an aid 

 to others in farther investigations. When I was able 

 to ascend the Iyeeambye to 14 south, and subsequently 

 descend it, I found, after all the care I could bestow, 

 that the alterations I was able to make in the original 

 native plan, were very trifling. The general idea their 

 map gave was wonderfully accurate. 



