[Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone]@TWC D-Link book
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

CHAPTER 13
12/32

Where the banks are high, as at the spot where the wagons stood in 1851, they are covered with magnificent trees, the habitat of tsetse, and the retreat of various antelopes, wild hogs, zebras, buffaloes, and elephants.
Among the trees may be observed some species of the 'Ficus Indica', light-green colored acacias, the splendid motsintsela, and evergreen cypress-shaped motsouri.

The fruit of the last-named was ripe, and the villagers presented many dishes of its beautiful pink-colored plums; they are used chiefly to form a pleasant acid drink.

The motsintsela is a very lofty tree, yielding a wood of which good canoes are made; the fruit is nutritious and good, but, like many wild fruits of this country, the fleshy parts require to be enlarged by cultivation: it is nearly all stone.
The course of the river we found to be extremely tortuous; so much so, indeed, as to carry us to all points of the compass every dozen miles.
Some of us walked from a bend at the village of Moremi to another nearly due east of that point, in six hours, while the canoes, going at more than double our speed, took twelve to accomplish the voyage between the same two places.

And though the river is from thirteen to fifteen feet in depth at its lowest ebb, and broad enough to allow a steamer to ply upon it, the suddenness of the bendings would prevent navigation; but, should the country ever become civilized, the Chobe would be a convenient natural canal.

We spent forty-two and a half hours, paddling at the rate of five miles an hour, in coming from Linyanti to the confluence; there we found a dike of amygdaloid lying across the Leeambye.
This amygdaloid with analami and mesotype contains crystals, which the water gradually dissolves, leaving the rock with a worm-eaten appearance.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books