264 
THE NEW AFRICA 
The next nine miles brought us to several families of people 
far different in appearance to the Mombokooshus or Makala- 
hari living on islands on the river. There was something 
familiar to us in their gigantic stature, and to our inquiries they 
answered that they called themselves Makuba. A mention of 
the Macheeayee tribe immediately opened their hearts, and they 
confessed themselves as belonging to these, and told us of 
a water connection flowing from the Cubango into the Chobe, 
along which they travelled in their canoes, indicating the depth 
of the channel as up to their middles, but also informed us that 
there were times when they had to pull their larger canoes a 
short distance through the mud and rushes left behind during 
the season when the river had sunk to its lowest level. At this 
time of the year the channel was still navigable for large canoes, 
but about the time when the first rains fell it usually became 
more dry. 
This day I shot a large crane of such unusual appearance 
that a superficial description of it will not be out of place. In 
height the bird was quite four feet from the ground, of a general 
black and white colour, with a greenish purple blue shot of 
colour in the wings. Its tail feathers, black, were twelve in 
number. From the root of the upper mandible depended a 
bright yellow flap of loose skin, with two small globular pen¬ 
dants underneath, of the same colour. The beak was bright red, 
and had a black stripe, half an inch or more in width, round the 
middle, that faded away underneath the lower mandible, leaving 
that part of the beak bright red. This meagre description 
leaves a lot to be desired, but I hope some ornithologist may, 
from these leading points, be able to identify the bird. 
Our commissariat department began to give us serious 
concern, for, as there was hardly any game in the country and 
corn could only occasionally be purchased sparingly, because 
none of the natives were willing to sell much at a time, even at 
the exorbitant prices we offered, we felt rather in a fix. The only 
article that would induce them to part with a small quantity 
of corn was gunpowder. By the judicious display of a little 
