Chap. XIII. CONFLUENCE OF CHOBE AND LEEAMBYE. 
233 
nutritious and good, but, like many wild fruits of tliis country, 
the fleshy parts requke to be enlarged by cultivation: it is 
nearly all stone. 
The com'se 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, 
wliich 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 tliis instance, imbibes an 
appreciable, though necessarily most minute, portion of the mi¬ 
nerals 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 wherever this light colour shows a greater amount of 
mineral, there are not mosquitoes enough to cause serious an¬ 
noyance 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 when the whole 
body of water collects into one bed, it is a goodly sight for one 
who has spent many years in the thirsty south. Standing on 
one bank, even the keen eye of the natives cannot detect whe¬ 
ther two large islands, a few miles east of the junction, are 
