Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

D >> David Livingstone >> Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa


On the day after our arrival at the lake, I applied to Lechulatebe for
guides to Sebituane. As he was much afraid of that chief, he objected,
fearing lest other white men should go thither also, and give Sebituane
guns; whereas, if the traders came to him alone, the possession of
fire-arms would give him such a superiority that Sebituane would be
afraid of him. It was in vain to explain that I would inculcate peace
between them--that Sebituane had been a father to him and Sechele, and
was as anxious to see me as he, Lechulatebe, had been. He offered to
give me as much ivory as I needed without going to that chief; but when
I refused to take any, he unwillingly consented to give me guides. Next
day, however, when Oswell and I were prepared to start, with the horses
only, we received a senseless refusal; and like Sekomi, who had thrown
obstacles in our way, he sent men to the Bayeiye with orders to refuse
us a passage across the river. Trying hard to form a raft at a narrow
part, I worked many hours in the water; but the dry wood was so
worm-eaten it would not bear the weight of a single person. I was not
then aware of the number of alligators which exist in the Zouga, and
never think of my labor in the water without feeling thankful that I
escaped their jaws. The season was now far advanced; and as Mr. Oswell,
with his wonted generous feelings, volunteered, on the spot, to go
down to the Cape and bring up a boat, we resolved to make our way south
again.

Coming down the Zouga, we had now time to look at its banks. These are
very beautiful, resembling closely many parts of the River Clyde above
Glasgow. The formation is soft calcareous tufa, such as forms the bottom
of all this basin. The banks are perpendicular on the side to which
the water swings, and sloping and grassy on the other. The slopes are
selected for the pitfalls designed by the Bayeiye to entrap the animals
as they come to drink. These are about seven or eight feet deep, three
or four feet wide at the mouth, and gradually decrease till they are
only about a foot wide at the bottom. The mouth is an oblong square (the
only square thing made by the Bechuanas, for every thing else is round),
and the long diameter at the surface is about equal to the depth. The
decreasing width toward the bottom is intended to make the animal wedge
himself more firmly in by his weight and struggles. The pitfalls are
usually in pairs, with a wall a foot thick left uncut between the ends
of each, so that if the beast, when it feels its fore legs descending,
should try to save itself from going in altogether by striding the hind
legs, he would spring forward and leap into the second with a force
which insures the fall of his whole body into the trap. They are covered
with great care. All the excavated earth is removed to a distance, so as
not to excite suspicion in the minds of the animals. Reeds and grass are
laid across the top; above this the sand is thrown, and watered so as to
appear exactly like the rest of the spot. Some of our party plumped into
these pitfalls more than once, even when in search of them, in order to
open them to prevent the loss of our cattle. If an ox sees a hole, he
carefully avoids it; and old elephants have been known to precede the
herd and whisk off the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the
way down to the water. We have known instances in which the old among
these sagacious animals have actually lifted the young out of the trap.

The trees which adorn the banks are magnificent. Two enormous baobabs
('Adansonia digitata'), or mowanas, grow near its confluence with the
lake where we took the observations for the latitude (20d 20' S.). We
were unable to ascertain the longitude of the lake, as our watches were
useless; it may be between 22 Deg. and 23 Deg. E. The largest of the two
baobabs was 76 feet in girth. The palmyra appears here and there among
trees not met with in the south. The mokuchong, or moshoma, bears an
edible fruit of indifferent quality, but the tree itself would be a fine
specimen of arboreal beauty in any part of the world. The trunk is often
converted into canoes. The motsouri, which bears a pink plum containing
a pleasant acid juice, resembles an orange-tree in its dark evergreen
foliage, and a cypress in its form. It was now winter-time, and we saw
nothing of the flora. The plants and bushes were dry; but wild indigo
abounded, as indeed it does over large tracts of Africa. It is called
mohetolo, or the "changer", by the boys, who dye their ornaments of
straw with the juice. There are two kinds of cotton in the country, and
the Mashona, who convert it into cloth, dye it blue with this plant.

We found the elephants in prodigious numbers on the southern bank. They
come to drink by night, and after having slaked their thirst--in doing
which they throw large quantities of water over themselves, and are
heard, while enjoying the refreshment, screaming with delight--they
evince their horror of pitfalls by setting off in a straight line to the
desert, and never diverge till they are eight or ten miles off. They are
smaller here than in the countries farther south. At the Limpopo,
for instance, they are upward of twelve feet high; here, only eleven:
farther north we shall find them nine feet only. The koodoo, or tolo,
seemed smaller, too, than those we had been accustomed to see. We
saw specimens of the kuabaoba, or straight-horned rhinoceros ('R.
Oswellii'), which is a variety of the white ('R. simus'); and we found
that, from the horn being projected downward, it did not obstruct the
line of vision, so that this species is able to be much more wary than
its neighbors.

We discovered an entirely new species of antelope, called leche or
lechwi. It is a beautiful water-antelope of a light brownish-yellow
color. Its horns--exactly like those of the 'Aigoceros ellipsiprimnus',
the waterbuck, or tumogo, of the Bechuanas--rise from the head with
a slight bend backward, then curve forward at the points. The chest,
belly, and orbits are nearly white, the front of the legs and ankles
deep brown. From the horns, along the nape to the withers, the male has
a small mane of the same yellowish color with the rest of the skin, and
the tail has a tuft of black hair. It is never found a mile from water;
islets in marshes and rivers are its favorite haunts, and it is quite
unknown except in the central humid basin of Africa. Having a good deal
of curiosity, it presents a noble appearance as it stands gazing, with
head erect, at the approaching stranger. When it resolves to decamp, it
lowers its head, and lays its horns down to a level with the withers;
it then begins with a waddling trot, which ends in its galloping and
springing over bushes like the pallahs. It invariably runs to the water,
and crosses it by a succession of bounds, each of which appears to be
from the bottom. We thought the flesh good at first, but soon got tired
of it.

Great shoals of excellent fish come down annually with the access of
waters. The mullet ('Mugil Africanus') is the most abundant. They are
caught in nets.

The 'Glanis siluris', a large, broad-headed fish, without scales, and
barbed--called by the natives "mosala"--attains an enormous size and
fatness. They are caught so large that when a man carries one over his
shoulder the tail reaches the ground. It is a vegetable feeder, and in
many of its habits resembles the eel. Like most lophoid fishes, it has
the power of retaining a large quantity of water in a part of its great
head, so that it can leave the river, and even be buried in the mud of
dried-up pools, without being destroyed. Another fish closely resembling
this, and named 'Clarias capensis' by Dr. Smith, is widely diffused
throughout the interior, and often leaves the rivers for the sake of
feeding in pools. As these dry up, large numbers of them are entrapped
by the people. A water-snake, yellow-spotted and dark brown, is often
seen swimming along with its head above the water: it is quite harmless,
and is relished as food by the Bayeiye.

They mention ten kinds of fish in their river; and, in their songs of
praise to the Zouga, say, "The messenger sent in haste is always forced
to spend the night on the way by the abundance of food you place before
him." The Bayeiye live much on fish, which is quite an abomination to
the Bechuanas of the south; and they catch them in large numbers by
means of nets made of the fine, strong fibres of the hibiscus, which
grows abundantly in all moist places. Their float-ropes are made of
the ife, or, as it is now called, the 'Sanseviere Angolensis', a
flag-looking plant, having a very strong fibre, that abounds from
Kolobeng to Angola; and the floats themselves are pieces of a
water-plant containing valves at each joint, which retain the air in
cells about an inch long. The mode of knotting the nets is identical
with our own.

They also spear the fish with javelins having a light handle, which
readily floats on the surface. They show great dexterity in harpooning
the hippopotamus; and, the barbed blade of the spear being attached to
a rope made of the young leaves of the palmyra, the animal can not
rid himself of the canoe, attached to him in whale fashion, except by
smashing it, which he not unfrequently does by his teeth or by a stroke
of his hind foot.

On returning to the Bakurutse, we found that their canoes for fishing
were simply large bundles of reeds tied together. Such a canoe would
be a ready extemporaneous pontoon for crossing any river that had reedy
banks.




Chapter 4.

Leave Kolobeng again for the Country of Sebituane--Reach the Zouga--
The Tsetse--A Party of Englishmen--Death of Mr. Rider--Obtain
Guides--Children fall sick with Fever--Relinquish the Attempt to reach
Sebituane--Mr. Oswell's Elephant-hunting--Return to Kolobeng--Make
a third Start thence--Reach Nchokotsa--Salt-pans--"Links", or
Springs--Bushmen--Our Guide Shobo--The Banajoa--An ugly Chief--The
Tsetse--Bite fatal to domestic Animals, but harmless to wild Animals
and Man--Operation of the Poison--Losses caused by it--The Makololo--
Our Meeting with Sebituane--Sketch of his Career--His Courage and
Conquests--Manoeuvres of the Batoka--He outwits them--His Wars with
the Matebele--Predictions of a native Prophet--Successes of the
Makololo--Renewed Attacks of the Matebele--The Island of Loyelo--Defeat
of the Matebele--Sebituane's Policy--His Kindness to Strangers and to
the Poor--His sudden Illness and Death--Succeeded by his Daughter--Her
Friendliness to us--Discovery, in June, 1851, of the Zambesi flowing
in the Centre of the Continent--Its Size--The Mambari--The
Slave-trade--Determine to send Family to England--Return to the Cape
in April, 1852--Safe Transit through the Caffre Country during
Hostilities--Need of a "Special Correspondent"--Kindness of the London
Missionary Society--Assistance afforded by the Astronomer Royal at the
Cape.



Having returned to Kolobeng, I remained there till April, 1850, and then
left in company with Mrs. Livingstone, our three children, and the chief
Sechele--who had now bought a wagon of his own--in order to go across
the Zouga at its lower end, with the intention of proceeding up the
northern bank till we gained the Tamunak'le, and of then ascending that
river to visit Sebituane in the north. Sekomi had given orders to fill
up the wells which we had dug with so much labor at Serotli, so we took
the more eastern route through the Bamangwato town and by Letloche. That
chief asked why I had avoided him in our former journeys. I replied that
my reason was that I knew he did not wish me to go to the lake, and I
did not want to quarrel with him. "Well," he said, "you beat me then,
and I am content."

Parting with Sechele at the ford, as he was eager to visit Lechulatebe,
we went along the northern woody bank of the Zouga with great labor,
having to cut down very many trees to allow the wagons to pass. Our
losses by oxen falling into pitfalls were very heavy. The Bayeiye kindly
opened the pits when they knew of our approach; but when that was not
the case, we could blame no one on finding an established custom of the
country inimical to our interests. On approaching the confluence of the
Tamunak'le we were informed that the fly called tsetse* abounded on its
banks. This was a barrier we never expected to meet; and, as it might
have brought our wagons to a complete stand-still in a wilderness, where
no supplies for the children could be obtained, we were reluctantly
compelled to recross the Zouga.

* 'Glossina morsitans', the first specimens of which were
brought to England in 1848 by my friend Major Vardon, from the
banks of the Limpopo.

From the Bayeiye we learned that a party of Englishmen, who had come to
the lake in search of ivory, were all laid low by fever, so we traveled
hastily down about sixty miles to render what aid was in our power.
We were grieved to find, as we came near, that Mr. Alfred Rider, an
enterprising young artist who had come to make sketches of this country
and of the lake immediately after its discovery, had died of fever
before our arrival; but by the aid of medicines and such comforts as
could be made by the only English lady who ever visited the lake, the
others happily recovered. The unfinished drawing of Lake Ngami was made
by Mr. Rider just before his death, and has been kindly lent for this
work by his bereaved mother.

Sechele used all his powers of eloquence with Lechulatebe to induce him
to furnish guides that I might be able to visit Sebituane on ox-back,
while Mrs. Livingstone and the children remained at Lake Ngami. He
yielded at last. I had a very superior London-made gun, the gift of
Lieutenant Arkwright, on which I placed the greatest value, both
on account of the donor and the impossibility of my replacing it.
Lechulatebe fell violently in love with it, and offered whatever
number of elephants' tusks I might ask for it. I too was enamored with
Sebituane; and as he promised in addition that he would furnish Mrs.
Livingstone with meat all the time of my absence, his arguments made me
part with the gun. Though he had no ivory at the time to pay me, I felt
the piece would be well spent on those terms, and delivered it to him.
All being ready for our departure, I took Mrs. Livingstone about six
miles from the town, that she might have a peep at the broad part of the
lake. Next morning we had other work to do than part, for our little boy
and girl were seized with fever. On the day following, all our servants
were down too with the same complaint. As nothing is better in these
cases than change of place, I was forced to give up the hope of seeing
Sebituane that year; so, leaving my gun as part payment for guides next
year, we started for the pure air of the Desert.

Some mistake had happened in the arrangement with Mr. Oswell, for we met
him on the Zouga on our return, and he devoted the rest of this season
to elephant-hunting, at which the natives universally declare he is the
greatest adept that ever came into the country. He hunted without dogs.
It is remarkable that this lordly animal is so completely harassed by
the presence of a few yelping curs as to be quite incapable of attending
to man. He makes awkward attempts to crush them by falling on his knees;
and sometimes places his forehead against a tree ten inches in diameter;
glancing on one side of the tree and then on the other, he pushes it
down before him, as if he thought thereby to catch his enemies. The only
danger the huntsman has to apprehend is the dogs running toward him, and
thereby leading the elephant to their master. Mr. Oswell has been known
to kill four large old male elephants a day. The value of the ivory in
these cases would be one hundred guineas. We had reason to be proud of
his success, for the inhabitants conceived from it a very high idea of
English courage; and when they wished to flatter me would say, "If you
were not a missionary you would just be like Oswell; you would not hunt
with dogs either." When, in 1852, we came to the Cape, my black coat
eleven years out of fashion, and without a penny of salary to draw,
we found that Mr. Oswell had most generously ordered an outfit for the
half-naked children, which cost about 200 Pounds, and presented it to
us, saying he thought Mrs. Livingstone had a right to the game of her
own preserves.

Foiled in this second attempt to reach Sebituane, we returned again to
Kolobeng, whither we were soon followed by a number of messengers from
that chief himself. When he heard of our attempts to visit him, he
dispatched three detachments of his men with thirteen brown cows to
Lechulatebe, thirteen white cows to Sekomi, and thirteen black cows to
Sechele, with a request to each to assist the white men to reach him.
Their policy, however, was to keep him out of view, and act as his
agents in purchasing with his ivory the goods he wanted. This is
thoroughly African; and that continent being without friths and arms
of the sea, the tribes in the centre have always been debarred from
European intercourse by its universal prevalence among all the people
around the coasts.

Before setting out on our third journey to Sebituane, it was necessary
to visit Kuruman; and Sechele, eager, for the sake of the commission
thereon, to get the ivory of that chief into his own hands, allowed all
the messengers to leave before our return. Sekomi, however, was more
than usually gracious, and even furnished us with a guide, but no one
knew the path beyond Nchokotsa which we intended to follow. When we
reached that point, we found that the main spring of the gun of another
of his men, who was well acquainted with the Bushmen, through whose
country we should pass, had opportunely broken. I never undertook
to mend a gun with greater zest than this; for, under promise of his
guidance, we went to the north instead of westward. All the other guides
were most liberally rewarded by Mr. Oswell.

We passed quickly over a hard country, which is perfectly flat. A little
soil lying on calcareous tufa, over a tract of several hundreds of
miles, supports a vegetation of fine sweet short grass, and mopane and
baobab trees. On several parts of this we found large salt-pans, one
of which, Ntwetwe, is fifteen miles broad and one hundred long. The
latitude might have been taken on its horizon as well as upon the sea.

Although these curious spots seem perfectly level, all those in this
direction have a gentle slope to the northeast: thither the rain-water,
which sometimes covers them, gently gravitates. This, it may be
recollected, is the direction of the Zouga. The salt dissolved in
the water has by this means all been transferred to one pan in that
direction, named Chuantsa; on it we see a cake of salt and lime an inch
and a half thick. All the others have an efflorescence of lime and one
of the nitrates only, and some are covered thickly with shells. These
shells are identical with those of the mollusca of Lake Ngami and the
Zouga. There are three varieties, spiral, univalve, and bivalve.

In every salt-pan in the country there is a spring of water on one side.
I can remember no exception to this rule. The water of these springs is
brackish, and contains the nitrate of soda. In one instance there are
two springs, and one more saltish than the other. If this supply came
from beds of rock salt the water would not be drinkable, as it generally
is, and in some instances, where the salt contained in the pan in which
these springs appear has been removed by human agency, no fresh deposit
occurs. It is therefore probable that these deposits of salt are the
remains of the very slightly brackish lakes of antiquity, large portions
of which must have been dried out in the general desiccation. We see an
instance in Lake Ngami, which, when low, becomes brackish, and this view
seems supported by the fact that the largest quantities of salt have
been found in the deepest hollows or lowest valleys, which have no
outlet or outgoing gorge; and a fountain, about thirty miles south of
the Bamangwato--the temperature of which is upward of 100 Deg.--while
strongly impregnated with pure salt, being on a flat part of the
country, is accompanied by no deposit.

When these deposits occur in a flat tufaceous country like the present,
a large space is devoid of vegetation, on account of the nitrates
dissolving the tufa, and keeping it in a state unfavorable to the growth
of plants.

We found a great number of wells in this tufa. A place called
Matlomagan-yana, or the "Links", is quite a chain of these never-failing
springs. As they occasionally become full in seasons when no rain
falls, and resemble somewhat in this respect the rivers we have already
mentioned, it is probable they receive some water by percolation from
the river system in the country beyond. Among these links we found many
families of Bushmen; and, unlike those on the plains of the Kalahari,
who are generally of short stature and light yellow color, these were
tall, strapping fellows, of dark complexion. Heat alone does not produce
blackness of skin, but heat with moisture seems to insure the deepest
hue.

One of these Bushmen, named Shobo, consented to be our guide over the
waste between these springs and the country of Sebituane. Shobo gave us
no hope of water in less than a month. Providentially, however, we came
sooner than we expected to some supplies of rain-water in a chain of
pools. It is impossible to convey an idea of the dreary scene on which
we entered after leaving this spot: the only vegetation was a low scrub
in deep sand; not a bird or insect enlivened the landscape. It was,
without exception, the most uninviting prospect I ever beheld; and,
to make matters worse, our guide Shobo wandered on the second day. We
coaxed him on at night, but he went to all points of the compass on the
trails of elephants which had been here in the rainy season, and then
would sit down in the path, and in his broken Sichuana say, "No water,
all country only; Shobo sleeps; he breaks down; country only;" and then
coolly curl himself up and go to sleep. The oxen were terribly fatigued
and thirsty; and on the morning of the fourth day, Shobo, after
professing ignorance of every thing, vanished altogether. We went on in
the direction in which we last saw him, and about eleven o'clock began
to see birds; then the trail of a rhinoceros. At this we unyoked the
oxen, and they, apparently knowing the sign, rushed along to find the
water in the River Mahabe, which comes from the Tamunak'le, and lay to
the west of us. The supply of water in the wagons had been wasted by one
of our servants, and by the afternoon only a small portion remained for
the children. This was a bitterly anxious night; and next morning the
less there was of water, the more thirsty the little rogues became. The
idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. It would almost
have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire
cause of the catastrophe; but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered
by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the
afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men
returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt
the true value.

The cattle, in rushing along to the water in the Mahabe, probably
crossed a small patch of trees containing tsetse, an insect which was
shortly to become a perfect pest to us. Shobo had found his way to the
Bayeiye, and appeared, when we came up to the river, at the head of a
party; and, as he wished to show his importance before his friends, he
walked up boldly and commanded our whole cavalcade to stop, and to bring
forth fire and tobacco, while he coolly sat down and smoked his pipe. It
was such an inimitably natural way of showing off, that we all stopped
to admire the acting, and, though he had left us previously in the
lurch, we all liked Shobo, a fine specimen of that wonderful people, the
Bushmen.

Next day we came to a village of Banajoa, a tribe which extends far to
the eastward. They were living on the borders of a marsh in which the
Mahabe terminates. They had lost their crop of corn ('Holcus sorghum'),
and now subsisted almost entirely on the root called "tsitla", a kind of
aroidoea, which contains a very large quantity of sweet-tasted starch.
When dried, pounded into meal, and allowed to ferment, it forms a not
unpleasant article of food. The women shave all the hair off their
heads, and seem darker than the Bechuanas. Their huts were built on
poles, and a fire is made beneath by night, in order that the smoke may
drive away the mosquitoes, which abound on the Mababe and Tamunak'le
more than in any other part of the country. The head man of this
village, Majane, seemed a little wanting in ability, but had had wit
enough to promote a younger member of the family to the office. This
person, the most like the ugly negro of the tobacconists' shops I ever
saw, was called Moroa Majane, or son of Majane, and proved an active
guide across the River Sonta, and to the banks of the Chobe, in the
country of Sebituane. We had come through another tsetse district
by night, and at once passed our cattle over to the northern bank to
preserve them from its ravages.