that the hunter can not begin at once
to cut up his own elephant, but must send notice to the lord of the soil
on which it lies, and wait until that personage sends one authorized to
see a fair partition made. If the hunter should begin to cut up before
the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose both the tusks
and all the flesh. The hind leg of a buffalo must also be given to the
man on whose land the animal was grazing, and a still larger quantity
of the eland, which here and every where else in the country is esteemed
right royal food. In the country above Zumbo we did not find a vestige
of this law; and but for the fact that it existed in the country of
the Bamapela, far to the south of this, I should have been disposed to
regard it in the same light as I do the payment for leave to pass--an
imposition levied on him who is seen to be weak because in the hands
of his slaves. The only game-laws in the interior are, that the man who
first wounds an animal, though he has inflicted but a mere scratch, is
considered the killer of it; the second is entitled to a hind quarter,
and the third to a fore leg. The chiefs are generally entitled to a
share as tribute; in some parts it is the breast, in others the whole
of the ribs and one fore leg. I generally respected this law, although
exceptions are sometimes made when animals are killed by guns. The
knowledge that he who succeeds in reaching the wounded beast first is
entitled to a share stimulates the whole party to greater exertions in
dispatching it. One of my men, having a knowledge of elephant medicine,
was considered the leader in the hunt; he went before the others,
examined the animals, and on his decision all depended. If he decided to
attack a herd, the rest went boldly on; but if he declined, none of them
would engage. A certain part of the elephant belonged to him by right
of the office he held, and such was the faith in medicine held by the
slaves of the Portuguese whom we met hunting, that they offered to pay
this man handsomely if he would show them the elephant medicine.

When near Mosusa's village we passed a rivulet called Chowe, now running
with rain-water. The inhabitants there extract a little salt from the
sand when it is dry, and all the people of the adjacent country come
to purchase it from them. This was the first salt we had met with since
leaving Angola, for none is to be found in either the country of the
Balonda or Barotse; but we he