482 
PEOJECT FOE A MAKOLOLO VILLAGE. Chap. XXIV. 
Leaving Katema’s town on tlie 19th, and proceeding four miles 
to the eastward, we forded the southern branch of Lake Dilolo. 
We found it a mile and a quarter broad; and as it flows into the 
Lotembwa, the lake would seem to be a drain of the surrounding 
flats, and to partake of the character of a fountain. The ford was 
waist-deep, and very difficult, from the masses of arum and rushes 
tlirough which we waded. Going to the eastward about three 
miles, we came to the Southern Lotembwa itself, running in a 
valley two miles broad. It is here eighty or ninety yards wide, 
and contains numerous islands covered with dense sylvan vegeta¬ 
tion. In the rainy season the valley is flooded, and as the waters 
dry up, great multitudes of fish are caught. This happens very 
extensively over the country, and fishing-weirs are met with every¬ 
where. A species of small fish, about the size of the minnow, is 
caught in bagfuls, and dried in the sun. The taste is a pungent 
aromatic bitter, and it was partaken of freely by my people, 
although they had never met with it before. On many of the 
paths which had been flooded, a nasty sort of shme of decayed 
vegetable matter is left beliind, and much sickness prevails dm^ing 
the drying up of the water. We did not find our friend Mozinkwa 
at his pleasant home on the Lokaloeje; his wife was dead, and he 
had removed elsewhere. He followed us some distance, but our 
reappearance seemed to stir up liis sorrows. We found the pontoon 
at the village in which we left it. It had been carefully preserved; 
but a mouse had eaten a hole in it, and rendered it useless. 
We traversed the extended plain on the north bank of the 
Leeba, and crossed tliis river a little farther on at Kanyonke’s 
village, which is about twenty miles west of the Peri hflls, our 
former ford. The first stage beyond the Leeba, was at the rivulet 
Loambo, by the village of Chebende, nephew of Shinte; and next 
day, we met Chebende himself, returning from the funeral of 
Samoana, his father. He was tliin and haggard-looking, compared 
to what he had been before, the probable effect of the orgies in 
wliich he had been engaged. Pitsane and Mohorisi, having con¬ 
cocted the project of a Makololo village on the banlis of the Leeba, 
as an approach to the white man’s market, spoke to Chebende, 
as an influential man, on the subject, but he cautiously avoided 
expressing an opinion. The idea which had sprung up in their 
own minds of an establishment somewhere near the confluence of 
