nuous navigation
when the water is low. The rapids are not visible when the river is
full, but the cataracts of Nambwe, Bombwe, and Kale must always be
dangerous. The fall at each of these is between four and six feet. But
the falls of Gonye present a much more serious obstacle. There we were
obliged to take the canoes out of the water, and carry them more than
a mile by land. The fall is about thirty feet. The main body of water,
which comes over the ledge of rock when the river is low, is collected
into a space seventy or eighty yards wide before it takes the leap, and,
a mass of rock being thrust forward against the roaring torrent, a loud
sound is produced. Tradition reports the destruction in this place of
two hippopotamus-hunters, who, over-eager in the pursuit of a wounded
animal, were, with their intended prey, drawn down into the frightful
gulf. There is also a tradition of a man, evidently of a superior mind,
who left his own countrymen, the Barotse, and came down the river, took
advantage of the falls, and led out a portion of the water there for
irrigation. Such minds must have arisen from time to time in these
regions, as well as in our own country, but, ignorant of the use of
letters, they have left no memorial behind them. We dug out some of an
inferior kind of potato ('Sisinyane') from his garden, for when once
planted it never dies out. This root is bitter and waxy, though it
is cultivated. It was not in flower, so I can not say whether it is a
solanaceous plant or not. One never expects to find a grave nor a stone
of remembrance set up in Africa; the very rocks are illiterate, they
contain so few fossils. Those here are of reddish variegated, hardened
sandstone, with madrepore holes in it. This, and broad horizontal strata
of trap, sometimes a hundred miles in extent, and each layer having an
inch or so of black silicious matter on it, as if it had floated there
while in a state of fusion, form a great part of the bottom of the
central valley. These rocks, in the southern part of the country
especially, are often covered with twelve or fifteen feet of soft
calcareous tufa. At Bombwe we have the same trap, with radiated zeolite,
probably mesotype, and it again appears at the confluence of the Chobe,
farther down.

As we passed up the river, the different villages of Banyeti turned out
to present Sekeletu with food and skins, as their tribute. One large
village is placed at Gonye, the inhabitants of whic