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Updated: June 10, 2025
We entered Kebrabasa rapids, at the east end of Chicova, in the canoes, and went down a number of miles, until the river narrowed into a groove of fifty or sixty yards wide, of which we have already spoken in describing the flood-bed and channel of low water. The navigation then became difficult and dangerous. A fifteen feet fall of the water in our absence had developed many cataracts.
Dr Livingstone had resolved to visit his old friend Sekeletu; but, finding that before the new crop came in, food could not be obtained beyond the Kebrabasa, he returned in the "Ma-Robert" once more to the Kongone. They found Major Sicard at Mazaro, he having come there with tools and slaves to build a custom-house and fort.
They all agreed to take half-pay until they too had learned to work; and we found no scarcity of labour, though all that could be exported is now out of the country. There had been a drought of unusual severity during the past season in the country between Lupata and Kebrabasa, and it had extended north-east to the Manganja highlands.
Kansala is the only rapid reported in the river until we come to Kebrabasa, twenty or thirty miles above Tete. On the north we have mountains appearing above the horizon, which are said to be on the banks of the Kafue. The chief Monze came to us on Sunday morning, wrapped in a large cloth, and rolled himself about in the dust, screaming "Kina bomba," as they all do.
Deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding streams seem never to have been tried here, as in California and Australia, nor has any machinery been used save common wooden basins for washing. Kebrabasa Rapids Tette African fever Exploration of the Shire Discovery of Lake Shirwa.
Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we had heard of the Kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make a short examination of them, and seized the opportunity of the Zambesi being unusually low, to endeavour to ascertain their character while uncovered by the water. We reached them on the 9th of November.
Dr Livingstone was stopping near the Kebrabasa village, when a man appeared, who pretended that he was a pondoro; that is, that he could change himself into a lion whenever he chose a statement his countrymen fully believed. Sometimes the pondoro hunts for the benefit of the villagers, when his wife takes him some medicine which enables him to change himself back into a man.
Some rocks in the water, near the outlet of Kariba, at a distance look like a fort; and such large masses dislocated, bent, and even twisted to a remarkable degree, at once attest some tremendous upheaving and convulsive action of nature, which probably caused Kebrabasa, Kariba, and the Victoria Falls to assume their present forms; it took place after the formation of the coal, that mineral having then been tilted up.
All the information we had been able to obtain from our Portuguese friends amounted to this, that some three or four detached rocks jutted out of the river in Kebrabasa, which, though dangerous to the cumbersome native canoes, could be easily passed by a steamer, and that if one or two of these obstructions were blasted away with gunpowder, no difficulty would hereafter be experienced.
Stopping one afternoon at a Kebrabasa village, a man, who pretended to be able to change himself into a lion, came to salute us. Smelling the gunpowder from a gun which had been discharged, he went on one side to get out of the wind of the piece, trembling in a most artistic manner, but quite overacting his part.
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