Majeele, after
having had all the men ferried across. An ox was slaughtered, and not an
ounce of it was left next morning. Our two young Makololo companions,
Maloka and Ramakukane, having never travelled before, naturally clung to
some of the luxuries they had been accustomed to at home. When they lay
down to sleep, their servants were called to spread their blankets over
their august persons, not forgetting their feet. This seems to be the
duty of the Makololo wife to her husband, and strangers sometimes receive
the honour. One of our party, having wandered, slept at the village of
Nambowe. When he laid down, to his surprise two of Nambowe's wives came
at once, and carefully and kindly spread his kaross over him.

A beautiful silvery fish with reddish fins, called Ngwesi, is very
abundant in the river; large ones weigh fifteen or twenty pounds each.
Its teeth are exposed, and so arranged that, when they meet, the edges
cut a hook like nippers. The Ngwesi seems to be a very ravenous fish. It
often gulps down the Konokono, a fish armed with serrated bones more than
an inch in length in the pectoral and dorsal fins, which, fitting into a
notch at the roots, can be put by the fish on full cock or straight
out,--they cannot be folded down, without its will, and even break in
resisting. The name "Konokono," elbow-elbow, is given it from a
resemblance its extended fins are supposed to bear to a man's elbows
stuck out from his body. It often performs the little trick of cocking
its fins in the stomach of the Ngwesi, and, the elbows piercing its
enemy's sides, he is frequently found floating dead. The fin bones seem
to have an acrid secretion on them, for the wound they make is
excessively painful. The Konokono barks distinctly when landed with the
hook. Our canoe-men invariably picked up every dead fish they saw on the
surface of the water, however far gone. An unfragrant odour was no
objection; the fish was boiled and eaten, and the water drunk as soup. It
is a curious fact that many of the Africans keep fish as we do woodcocks,
until they are extremely offensive, before they consider them fit to eat.
Our paddlers informed us on our way down that iguanas lay their eggs in
July and August, and crocodiles in September. The eggs remain a month or
two under the sand where they are laid, and the young come out when the
rains have fairly commenced. The canoe-men were quite positive that
crocodiles frequently stun m