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Updated: May 6, 2025
The banks of the river were clothed with trees, among them the ficus indica, acacias, and the evergreen motsouri, from the pink-coloured specimens of which a pleasant acid drink is obtained. Leaving the Chobe, they entered the Leeambye, up which they proceeded at somewhat a slow rate, as they had to wait at different villages for supplies of food.
We crossed five branches of the Chobe before reaching the main stream: this ramification must be the reason why it appeared so small to Mr. Oswell and myself in 1851. When all the departing branches re-enter, it is a large, deep river. The spot of embarkation was the identical island where we met Sebituane, first known as the island of Maunku, one of his wives.
The chief lent me his own canoe, and, as it was broader than usual, I could turn about in it with ease. The Chobe is much infested by hippopotami, and, as certain elderly males are expelled the herd, they become soured in their temper, and so misanthropic as to attack every canoe that passes near them.
The ant-hills are here very high, some thirty feet, and of a base so broad that trees grow on them; while the lands, annually flooded, bear nothing but grass. From one of these ant-hills we discovered an inlet to the Chobe; and, having gone back for the pontoon, we launched ourselves on a deep river, here from eighty to one hundred yards wide.
Taking advantage of the long-continued drought, he had set fire to the reeds between the Chobe and Zambesi, in such a manner as to drive the game out at one corner, where his men laid in wait with their spears. He had killed five elephants and three buffaloes, wounding several others which escaped.
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.
But there are so many modifying circumstances, it is difficult to draw any reliable conclusion from the currents. The Chobe is sometimes heard of as flooded, about 40 miles above Linyanti, a fortnight before the inundation reaches that point, but it is very tortuous. The great river Magdalena falls only 500 feet in a thousand miles; other rivers much more.
Still, remembering that this was the end of the dry season, when such rivers as the Orange do not even contain a fifth part of the water of the Chobe, the difference between the rivers of the north and south must be sufficiently obvious. The rapids are caused by rocks of dark brown trap, or of hardened sandstone, stretching across the stream.
Our Bakwain guide to the lake, Rachosi, told me that his mother lived in the country of Sebituane, but, though a good specimen of the Bechuanas, he laughed at the idea of going so far as from the Lake Ngami to the Chobe merely for the purpose of seeing her. Had he been one of the Makalaka, he never would have parted from her.
He had been engaged in warfare nearly all his life, under varying fortunes, with the neighbouring savage tribes, and had at length established himself in a secure position behind the Chobe and Leeambye, whose broad streams guarded him from the inroads of his enemies. He had now a larger number of subjects and was richer in cattle than any chief in that part of Africa.
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