THE CHOBE RIVER 
53 
and myself had religiously followed out this precaution, and I 
relate with much satisfaction that in consequence neither of us 
had a single day’s illness throughout the trip, although we 
traversed the most appalling swamps, including the famous 
Linyanti and Selinda or Sunta—hotbeds of fever. 
Blockley kindly lent us some boys, whom he put in charge 
of a native hunter, to assist us as far as Mameelis, with instruc¬ 
tions to hunt ostriches on their way hack. 
On the 25th of June we first sighted the banks of the Chobe, 
land and river of our sporting hopes and ambitions. Jan Veyers 
FIRST VIEW OF CHOBE 
and myself had gone ahead through the sand-belts, here more 
undulating and abrupt as they break away towards the river, 
and soon caught a glimpse of open water limpidly reflecting the 
light from two channels each two hundred to three hundred 
yards wide, while the rest of the river-bed, one thousand yards 
wide in all, is a mass of reeds and swamp. The current was 
running at a speed nearly one and a half knots an hour, while 
the water is very deep. From an elevation on the bank we could 
see various hippo popping up their heads in the stream to 
breathe, a performance occasionally accompanied by sounds not 
unlike those brought about by striking a machine boiler with a 
large hammer. 
