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The narrative of Thomas Hughes, the well-known English author, whose favorite subjects were manly men and their characteristic deeds, follows the explorer on the first of his famous journeys in the Zambesi Basin. I embarked for Africa in 1840, and, after a voyage of three months, reached Cape Town.
A range of mountains, named Lokinga, extends from the south-east to the south-west: some small burns come down from them, but no river; this range joins the Koné, or Mokoné range, west of Katanga, from which on one side rises the Lufira, and on the other the Liambai, or Zambesi.
In the Northern part of Matabeleland, not far from the Zambesi river, lives a tribe called Bashankwe who follow a custom of marriage known locally as "ku garidzela" which is in effect a rendering of personal service, in the doing of such primitive husbandry as there obtains by the prospective son-in-law for the parent of the girl chosen instead of paying for her a consideration in money or cattle as is done by most of the Natives in South Africa.
I have never, to my regret, seen the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, as on two separate occasions when starting for them unforeseen circumstances detained me in Cape Town.
These men had been living in clover, and were uncommonly fat and plump. When sent to trade, slaves wisely never stint themselves of beer or anything else, which their master's goods can buy. The temperature of the Zambesi had increased 10 degrees since August, being now 80 degrees.
We spent a night at a baobab, which was hollow, and would hold twenty men inside. It had been used as a lodging-house by the Babisa. As we approached nearer the Zambesi, the country became covered with broad-leaved bushes, pretty thickly planted, and we had several times to shout to elephants to get out of our way.
To the north of Morumbala we have a fine view of the mountains of the Maganja; they here come close to the river, and terminate in Morumbala. Many of them are conical, and the Shire is reported to flow among them, and to run on the Senna side of Morumbala before joining the Zambesi.
And now oh! now she felt air blowing in her face, and heard the sound of reeds whispering, and water running, and saw hanging like a lamp in the blue sky, a star the morning star! Benita could have wept, she could have worshipped it, yet she pushed on between rocks till she found herself among tall reeds, and standing in water. She had gained the banks of the Zambesi.
The gravel and the sand drain away the water so effectually that the trees are exposed to the heat during a portion of the year without any moisture; hence they are not large, like those on the Zambesi, and are often scrubby. The rivers are all of the sandy kind, and we pass over large patches between this and Tete in which, in the dry season, no water is to be found.
All the merchandise of Senna and Tette is brought to that point in large canoes, and thence carried six miles across the country on men's heads to be reshipped on a small stream that flows into the Kwakwa, or Quillimane river, which is entirely distinct from the Zambesi.
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