A GREAT RIVER 
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possibilities, and also as a motive power unequalled except 
by the greatest falls in the world. 
Judging from the native cotton growing wild on the banks, 
and the quantities of cornfields we passed, the country would 
support many thousands of Europeans, in absolute independence 
and even wealth, who at present strive so hardly to keep body 
and soul together in the trying winter seasons of Northern 
Europe. Here is no severe winter and no starvation with its 
consequent illnesses, but here is a soil which, properly tilled, 
will yield crops in an abundance that would amaze the ordinary 
European. A good cattle country also, with no tsetse fly, 
forests of trees capable of being turned to all uses necessary 
for civilised life, with a charming climate, slightly warm at 
the start for new arrivals, but dry and healthy, and lastly, 
most important of all, with a navigable waterway for large 
craft extending from the Makari Kari lake vid Lake Ngami 
up the Cubango to Indala’s, and even into the Chobe at certain 
seasons of the year—during May, June, July—through the 
channel we discovered connecting the two rivers, and so on 
down to the Zambesi, whose waters are. also navigable for 
a great distance, totalling an open watercourse over one 
thousand miles in extent. What grand opportunities are 
held out to the future settlers of this country, and what 
practical facilities are offered by this waterway for connecting 
railways coming from either coast, with a string of steam-boats 
that can supply the settlers in the interior with the means of 
transport. 
With the strides of civilised occupation that are rapidly 
taking place in South Africa, the time may not be far distant 
when the hum of water-driven machinery shall echo from 
bank to bank of the Cubango, and mingle with the music of 
lowing herds and the wholesome sound of civilised life. Once 
span the short distance still intervening between the railway 
line, now almost an accomplished fact, through Khama’s country 
to Matabeleland from the Cape, and the head-waters of the 
