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The general idea their map gave was wonderfully accurate; and now I give, in the larger map appended, their views of the other rivers, in the hope that they may prove helpful to any traveler who may pursue the investigation farther. 24TH. We remained a day at the village of Moyara. Here the valley in which the Lekone flows trends away to the eastward, while our course is more to the northeast.
The Unguesi and Lekone, with their feeders, flow westward, this river to the south, and all those to which we are about to come take an easterly direction. We were thus at the apex of the ridge, and found that, as water boiled at 202 Deg., our altitude above the level of the sea was over 5000 feet.
The Lekone now winds in it in an opposite direction to that in which the ancient river must have flowed. Both the Lekone and Unguesi flow back toward the centre of the country, and in an opposite direction to that of the main stream. It was plain, then, that we were ascending the farther we went eastward.
The level of the lower portion of the Lekone is about two hundred feet above that of the Zambesi at the falls, and considerably more than the altitude of Linyanti; consequently, when the river flowed along this ancient bed instead of through the rent, the whole country between this and the ridge beyond Libebe westward, Lake Ngami and the Zouga southward, and eastward beyond Nchokotsa, was one large fresh-water lake.
Having descended about ten miles, we came to the island of Nampene, at the beginning of the rapids, where we were obliged to leave the canoes and proceed along the banks on foot. The next evening we slept opposite the island of Chondo, and, then crossing the Lekone or Lekwine, early the following morning were at the island of Sekote, called Kalai.
20TH NOVEMBER. Sekeletu and his large party having conveyed me thus far, and furnished me with a company of 114 men to carry the tusks to the coast, we bade adieu to the Makololo, and proceeded northward to the Lekone. The country around is very beautiful, and was once well peopled with Batoka, who possessed enormous herds of cattle.
No sooner were the Makololo, then called Basuto, safely over, than they were confronted by the whole Batoka nation; and to this day the Makololo point with pride to the spot on the Lekone, near to which they were encamped, where Sebetuane, with a mere handful of warriors in comparison to the vast horde that surrounded him, stood waiting the onslaught, the warriors in one small body, the women and children guarding the cattle behind them.
NOVEMBER 26TH. As the oxen could only move at night, in consequence of a fear that the buffaloes in this quarter might have introduced the tsetse, I usually performed the march by day on foot, while some of the men brought on the oxen by night. On coming to the villages under Marimba, an old man, we crossed the Unguesi, a rivulet which, like the Lekone, runs backward.
Altogether, Dr Livingstone considered these falls the most wonderful sight he had beheld in Africa. Returning to Kalai the doctor and his party met Sekeletu, and, bidding him a final farewell, set off northwards to Lekone, through a beautiful country, on the 20th of November.
He has a large herd of cattle, and a tract of fine pasture-land on the beautiful stream Lekone. A home-feeling comes over one, even in the interior of Africa, at seeing once more cattle grazing peacefully in the meadows. The tsetse inhabits the trees which bound the pasture-land on the west; so, should the herdsman forget his duty, the cattle straying might be entirely lost.
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