TRADING AND CURRENCY 
51 
that drove them to rebellion, in spite of the value they attached 
to the goods when once in their possession. 
Westbeech had established this mode of payment to natives 
by slips of paper, as a matter of convenience, for services, etc., or 
in trade, and by religiously redeeming his paper, when his wagons 
periodically arrived from the settlements with goods, was enabled 
to carry on his trade and work without being in immediate pos¬ 
session of articles to pay down for purchases, etc. This often 
enabled him to have a load of ivory, feathers, and skins in readi¬ 
ness to send out with the returning wagons. He informed us 
that he was obliged frequently to redeem 4 bits of paper ’ signed 
by hunters and others who had left the country without settling 
their debts, in order to uphold the integrity of the paper-system. 
Bidding Westbeech and the Fathers a hearty farewell, we 
started for a pan called Kajuma, the first stage on our journey, 
where we had arranged to meet a half-breed called Jan Waal, a 
hunter, who had promised to guide us through the sand-belts 
straight to the Sonta river, where it joins the Chobe, a route on 
which he professed to know the locality of pans containing water 
at easy distances along the route. But when we reached Kajuma 
Jan Waal had disappeared from his huts, and the natives told 
us that, hearing of a troop of elephants, he had left hurriedly on 
their track, without of course being able to say when he would 
return. Neither Jan Veyers nor any of the other people accom¬ 
panying us had ever been this road before, so we decided to take 
the beaten path to the junction of the Chobe and Zambesi rivers 
at Lejuma, and follow the right bank of the Chobe upwards past 
the Sonta river to Matambanja’s. 
The difficulties attendant upon starting with bearers have 
been so often related by travellers that I refrain from troubling 
the reader with even a portion of our woes on the first fifty miles. 
Circumstances provided us with our full share of annoyances, 
caused by keeping the boys together, organising the messes, and 
whacking along unwilling donkeys, whose chief aim seemed to be 
to rid themselves of their loads by rubbing against convenient 
stumps and trees. 
