h are required to
assist the Makololo to carry their canoes past the falls. The tsetse
here lighted on us even in the middle of the stream. This we crossed
repeatedly, in order to make short cuts at bends of the river. The
course is, however, remarkably straight among the rocks; and here the
river is shallow, on account of the great breadth of surface which it
covers. When we came to about 16d 16' S. latitude, the high wooded banks
seemed to leave the river, and no more tsetse appeared. Viewed from
the flat, reedy basin in which the river then flowed, the banks seemed
prolonged into ridges, of the same wooded character, two or three
hundred feet high, and stretched away to the N.N.E. and N.N.W. until
they were twenty or thirty miles apart. The intervening space, nearly
one hundred miles in length, with the Leeambye winding gently near the
middle, is the true Barotse valley. It bears a close resemblance to the
valley of the Nile, and is inundated annually, not by rains, but by the
Leeambye, exactly as Lower Egypt is flooded by the Nile. The villages
of the Barotse are built on mounds, some of which are said to have
been raised artificially by Santuru, a former chief of the Barotse, and
during the inundation the whole valley assumes the appearance of a large
lake, with the villages on the mounds like islands, just as occurs in
Egypt with the villages of the Egyptians. Some portion of the waters of
inundation comes from the northwest, where great floodings also occur,
but more comes from the north and northeast, descending the bed of the
Leeambye itself. There are but few trees in this valley: those which
stand on the mounds were nearly all transplanted by Santuru for shade.
The soil is extremely fertile, and the people are never in want of
grain, for, by taking advantage of the moisture of the inundation, they
can take two crops a year. The Barotse are strongly attached to this
fertile valley; they say, "Here hunger is not known." There are so many
things besides corn which a man can find in it for food, that it is no
wonder they desert from Linyanti to return to this place.

The great valley is not put to a tithe of the use it might be. It is
covered with coarse succulent grasses, which afford ample pasturage for
large herds of cattle; these thrive wonderfully, and give milk copiously
to their owners. When the valley is flooded, the cattle are compelled to
leave it and go to the higher lands, where they fall off in condit