566 
GEOLOGICAL STEUCTUKE. 
Chap. XXVIII. 
to shake off the seeds; he then picks them up singly and eats 
them. Or he may be seen standing by the masuka and other fruit 
trees, patiently picking off the sweet fruits one by one. He also 
digs up bulbs and tubers, but none of these are thoroughly digested. 
Bruce remarked upon the undigested bits of wood seen in their 
droppings, and he must have observed, too, that neither leaves nor 
seeds are changed, by passing through the alimentary canal. The 
woody fibre of roots and branches is dropped in the state of tow, 
the nutritious matter alone having been extracted. This capa¬ 
bility of removing all the nourishment, and the selection of those 
kinds of food which contain great quantities of mucilage and gum, 
accounts for the fact that herds of elephants produce but small 
effect upon the vegetation of a country—quality being more 
requisite than quantity. The amount of internal fat found in 
them makes them much prized by the inhabitants, who are all 
very fond of it, both for food and ointment. 
After leaving the elephant valley, we passed though a very 
beautiful country, but thinly inhabited by man. The underlying 
rock is trap, and dykes of talcose gneiss. The trap is often seen 
tilted on its edge, or dipping a little either to the north or 
south. The strike is generally to the N.E., the direction we are 
going. About Losito we found the trap had given place to 
hornblende schist, mica schist, and various schorly rocks. We 
had now come into the region, in which the appearance of the 
rocks, conveys the impression of a gveat force having acted along 
the bed of the Zambesi. Indeed I was led to the belief, from 
seeing the manner in which the rocks have been thrust away on 
both sides from its bed, that the power winch formed the crack of 
the falls, had given direction to the river below, and opened a bed 
for it all the way from the falls to beyond the gorge of Lupata. 
Passing the rivulet Losito, and through the ranges of hills, 
we reached the residence of Semalembue on the 18th. His 
village is situated at the bottom of ranges through which the 
Kafue finds a passage, and close to the bank of that river. The 
Kafue, sometimes called Kahowhe or Bashukulompo river, is 
upwards of 200 yards wide here, and fuU of hippopotami, the 
young of which may be seen perched on the necks of their 
dams. At this point we had reached about the same level as 
Linyanti. 
