ly
any poison), besides pumpkins, melons, beans, and ground-nuts. These,
with plenty of fish in the river, its branches and lagoons, wild fruits
and water-fowl, always make the people refer to the Barotse as the land
of plenty. The scene from the ridge, on looking back, was beautiful. One
can not see the western side of the valley in a cloudy day, such as
that was when we visited the stockade, but we could see the great river
glancing out at different points, and fine large herds of cattle quietly
grazing on the green succulent herbage, among numbers of cattle-stations
and villages which are dotted over the landscape. Leches in hundreds
fed securely beside them, for they have learned only to keep out of
bow-shot, or two hundred yards. When guns come into a country the
animals soon learn their longer range, and begin to run at a distance of
five hundred yards.

I imagined the slight elevation (Katongo) might be healthy, but was
informed that no part of this region is exempt from fever. When
the waters begin to retire from this valley, such masses of decayed
vegetation and mud are exposed to the torrid sun that even the natives
suffer severely from attacks of fever. The grass is so rank in its
growth that one can not see the black alluvial soil of the bottom of
this periodical lake. Even when the grass falls down in winter, or is
"laid" by its own weight, one is obliged to lift the feet so high, to
avoid being tripped up by it, as to make walking excessively fatiguing.
Young leches are hidden beneath it by their dams; and the Makololo youth
complain of being unable to run in the Barotse land on this account.
There was evidently no healthy spot in this quarter; and the current of
the river being about four and a half miles per hour (one hundred yards
in sixty seconds), I imagined we might find what we needed in the higher
lands, from which the river seemed to come. I resolved, therefore, to
go to the utmost limits of the Barotse country before coming to a final
conclusion. Katongo was the best place we had seen; but, in order to
accomplish a complete examination, I left Sekeletu at Naliele, and
ascended the river. He furnished me with men, besides my rowers, and
among the rest a herald, that I might enter his villages in what is
considered a dignified manner. This, it was supposed, would be effected
by the herald shouting out at the top of his voice, "Here comes the
lord; the great lion;" the latter phrase being "tau e ton