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The plains of Lobale, to the west of this, give rise to a great many streams, which unite, and form the deep, never-failing Chobe. Similar extensive flats give birth to the Loeti and Kasai, and, as we shall see further on, all the rivers of an extensive region owe their origin to oozing bogs, and not to fountains.
On November 11, 1853, he left Linyanti, and arrived at Loanda on May 31, 1854. The first stages of the journey were to be by water, and Sekeletu accompanied him to the Chobe, where he was to embark. They crossed five branches before reaching the main stream, a wide and deep river full of hippopotami.
Thus, for instance, they assured me that if they go up the Simah in a canoe, they can enter the Chobe, and descend that river to the Leeambye; or they may go up the Kama and come down the Simah; and so in the case of the Kafue. It is reputed to be connected in this way with the Leeambye in the north, and to part with the Loangwa; and the Makololo went from the one into the other in canoes.
The Batoka have no name for the giraffe or the ostrich in their language; yet, as the former exists in considerable numbers in the angle formed by the Leeambye and Chobe, they may have come from the north along the western ridge.
Having reached the Chobe, a large river, which falls into the Zambesi, leaving their attendants encamped with their cattle on an island, Dr Livingstone and his family, with Mr Oswell, embarked in a canoe on the former river, and proceeded down it about twenty miles to an island, where Sebituane was waiting to receive them.
Besides these, I had a thermometer by Dollond; a compass from the Cape Observatory, and a small pocket one in addition; a good small telescope with a stand capable of being screwed into a tree. Left the town of Linyanti, accompanied by Sekeletu and his principal men, to embark on the Chobe. The chief came to the river in order to see that all was right at parting.
After spending one night at the Makololo village on Mparia, we left the Chobe, and, turning round, began to ascend the Leeambye; on the 19th of November we again reached the town of Sesheke. It stands on the north bank of the river, and contains a large population of Makalaka, under Moriantsane, brother-in-law of Sebituane.
The Chobe would seem to have been too narrow to act as an obstacle to the giraffe, supposing it to have come into that district from the south; but the broad river into which that stream flows seems always to have presented an impassable barrier to both the giraffe and the ostrich, though they abound on its southern border, both in the Kalahari Desert and the country of Mashona.
The Makololo expressed great satisfaction with the route we had opened up to the west, and soon after our arrival a "picho" was called, in order to discuss the question of removal to the Barotse valley, so that they might be nearer the market. Some of the older men objected to abandoning the line of defense afforded by the rivers Chobe and Zambesi against their southern enemies the Matebele.
The villagers looked as we may suppose people do who see a ghost, and in their figurative way of speaking said, "He has dropped among us from the clouds, yet came riding on the back of a hippopotamus! We Makololo thought no one could cross the Chobe without our knowledge, but here he drops among us like a bird."
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