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They are covered with trees, and the left bank has the tsetse and elephants. The water of inundation covers even these lofty banks, but does not stand long upon them; hence the crop of trees. Where it remains for any length of time, trees can not live.
We passed through a tract of country covered with mopane trees, where the hard baked soil refused to let the usual thick crops of grass grow; and here we came upon very many tracks of buffaloes, elephants, antelopes, and the spoor of one lion. An ox we drove along with us, as provision for the way, was sorely bitten by the tsetse.
Honey is very cheap; a good large pot of about a gallon, with four fowls, was given for two yards of calico. Buffaloes again bitten by tsetse, and by another fly exactly like the house-fly, but having a straight hard proboscis instead of a soft one; other large flies make the blood run. The tsetse does not disturb the buffaloes, but these others and the smaller flies do.
The deft hands swept the birds and beasts, with tarantula and tsetse, into the wooden box, and lifted the children from their chairs, as Captain Bingo and Beauvayse, following the D.A.A.G., came in, brimming with various versions of what had happened out there on the veld.... "I have other things to play with just now, Hammy. Run along with Berta now. You'll find your nurse in the hall."
The banks of the Chobe, like those of the Zouga, are of soft calcareous tufa, and the river has cut out for itself a deep, perpendicular-sided bed. 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.
Continuous rains kept us for some time on the banks of the Chiponga, and here we were unfortunate enough to come among the tsetse. Mr. J. N. Gray, of the British Museum, has kindly obliged me with a drawing of the insect, with the ravages of which I have unfortunately been too familiar. No. 2 is the insect magnified; and No. 3 shows the magnified proboscis and poison-bulb at the root.*
All unsuspected, they had made then-big flank march to meet the eastern flanking column, and cut the road behind the German force in a pincer grip. But the blind bush robbed our troopers of their sense of direction, and the long trek through waterless bush, the tsetse fly and horse-sickness that took their daily toll of all our horses reduced the speed of cavalry to little more than a walk.
We were slily told that native Portuguese take off their hats to these river gods, and pass in solemn silence; when safely beyond the promontories, they fire muskets, and, as we ought to do, give the canoe- men grog. From the spoor of buffaloes and elephants it appears that these animals frequent Lupata in considerable numbers, and we have often observed the association the tsetse fly is common.
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.
The tsetse is, however, an insuperable barrier to hunting with horses there, and Europeans can do nothing on foot. The step of the elephant when charging the hunter, though apparently not quick, is so long that the pace equals the speed of a good horse at a canter.
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