Chap. IV. 
DISCOVEKY OF THE ZAMBESI. 
91 
all represent it as rising far to tlie east of where we now were; and 
if ever anything like a chain of trading stations had existed across 
the country between the latitudes 12° and 18° south, tliis magni¬ 
ficent portion of the river must have been known before. We saw 
it at the end of the dry season, at the time when the river is about 
at its lowest, and yet there was a breadth of from tliree hundred 
to six hundred yards of deep flowing water. Mr. Oswell said he 
had never seen such a fine river, even in India. At the period of 
its aimual inundation it rises fully twenty feet in perpendicular 
height, and floods flfteen or twenty miles of lands adjacent to its 
banks. 
The country over which we had travelled from the Chobe was 
perfectly flat, except where there were large ant-hills, or the 
remains of former ones, wliich had left mounds a few feet Iflgh. 
These are generally covered with wild date-trees and palmyras, 
and in some parts there are forests of mimosse and mopane. 
Occasionally the country between the Chobe and Zambesi is 
flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying near the 
Chobe, or on its banks. The Makololo were living among these 
swamps for the sake of the protection the deep reedy rivers 
afforded them against their enemies. 
Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement for 
myself, I could not conscientiously ask them to abandon theh 
defences for my convenience alone. The healthy districts were 
defenceless, and the safe localities were so deleterious to human 
life, that the original Basutos had nearly all been cut off by the 
fever; I therefore feared to subject my family to the scourge. 
As we were the very flrst white men the mhabitants had ever 
seen, we were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first 
who came to see us was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy 
dressing-gown of printed caHco. Many of the Makololo, besides, 
had garments of blue, green, and red baize, and also of pruited 
cottons; on inquhy, we learned that these had been purchased, in 
exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari, which is situated 
near Bihe. Tliis tribe began the slave-trade with Sebituane only 
in 1850, and, but for the unwillingness of Lechulatebe to allow us 
to pass, we should have been with Sebituane in time to have 
prevented it from commencing at aU. The Mambari visited in 
ancient times the chief ofAhe Barotse, whom Sebituane con- 
