260 
THE NEW AFRICA 
gone on ahead, spite of my desire that he should rest, and 
consequently we shifted camp seven and a half miles down 
the river, where we overtook him nursing his foot. He had 
also started the chronometer again by a longitude taken at 
Indala’s, allowing by dead reckoning for any difference in 
the time. 
The following day Harnmar again pluckily struggled ahead 
with his sore foot, only requesting that I should leave the treat¬ 
ment to him alone, and give him the necessary dressings to 
bind it up with. He troubled us so little about it that shortly 
1 forgot the circumstance. We passed enormous flocks of 
guinea-fowls feeding in old cornfields along the river banks, 
so unsophisticated that the boj^s killed a great number with 
their sticks, and we obtained a good supply of food for the 
mere trouble of killing them in this simple manner. 
We passed many small Mombokooshu villages, and saw 
women fishing along the swamps that line the river banks, 
where the fish had been closed in by brush-wood fences rapidly 
erected by the natives, and caught in pools left by the fast reced¬ 
ing water of the Cubango, which, like the Chobe, also has its 
flood season. The river was now quite four miles broad, covered 
with reeds, in whose midst fine bush-grown islands were visible 
towering above them, but without the, to us, familiar feature of 
the kolahni palm. Otherwise the river had so many character¬ 
istics in common with the Chobe, as we knew it, that it would 
have required very little imagination to have thought oneself 
moving along that stream. 
This day, the 9th of September, the thermometer registered 
the highest point we had yet experienced—ninety-three degrees 
Fahrenheit in the shade. Yet, owing to the dryness of the 
atmosphere, we felt no inconvenience at all from heat. 
September and October are the hottest months in this part 
of the interior, owing to the approaching sun from the North 
shining, unhindered by clouds, directly on the earth’s surface. 
The hunters of this country recommend the advisability of 
remaining inactive during these two months, for the experiences 
