ess. Poor
Mamochishane! After a short reign of a few months she had risen in the
assembly and "addressed her brother with a womanly gush of tears. 'I
have been a chief only because my father wished it. I would always have
preferred to be married and have a family like other women. You,
Sekeletu, must be chief, and build up our father's house.'"

On November 11, 1853, he left Linyanti, and arrived at Loanda on May 31,
1854. The first stages of the journey were to be by water, and Sekeletu
accompanied him to the Chobe, where he was to embark. They crossed five
branches before reaching the main stream, a wide and deep river full of
hippopotami. "The chief lent me his own canoe, and as it was broader
than usual I could turn about in it with ease. I had three muskets for
my people, and a rifle and double-barrelled shotgun for myself. My
ammunition was distributed through the luggage, that we might not be
left without a supply. Our chief hopes for food were in our guns. I
carried twenty pounds of beads worth forty shillings, a few biscuits, a
few pounds of tea and sugar, and about twenty pounds of coffee. One
small tin canister, about fifteen inches square, was filled with spare
shirts, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life,
another of the same size was stored with medicines, a third with books,
and a fourth with a magic lantern, which we found of much service. The
sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained the
clothes we expected to wear out in the journey, which, with a small tent
just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a
horse rug as a bed, completed my equipment. An array of baggage would
have probably excited the cupidity of the tribes through whose country
we wished to pass."

The voyage up the Chobe, and the Zambesi after the junction of those
rivers, was prosperous but slow, in consequence of stoppages opposite
villages. "My man Pitsane knew of the generous orders of Sekeletu, and
was not disposed to allow them remain a dead letter." In the rapids,
"the men leaped into the water without the least hesitation to save the
canoes from being dashed against the obstructions or caught in eddies.
They must never be allowed to come broadside to the stream, for being
flat-bottomed they would at once be capsized and everything in them
lost." When free from fever he was delighted to note the numbers of
birds, several of them unknown, which swarmed on the r