after childbirth have to live apart from their husbands from one to three months, according to their means; a period of seclusion is prescribed for all who have been seriously ill; in all these cases the linyakas are invariably consulted and receive substantial rewards, one of the most common directions which they give consisting, as I have said, in ordering the woolly hair to be cut off with a knife or small sharpened horn.
We left Shoshong for the Marico district on the 16th of February. The weather was still unpropitious, and our progress was retarded by the miry state of the soil; in many places the water was two feet deep, and the dense growth of the woods did not permit us to make a détour to avoid it. The entire district south-eastwards between Shoshong and the Limpopo was one great forest. In some places the soil continued salt, and salt-pans were of not unfrequent occurrence; towards the south, on the banks of the Sirorume, it became rather undulated and very sandy. The journey occupies three days; and in the winter there are only two places where fresh water can be obtained.
In the course of the next day’s march I made my first acquaintance with a bird that throughout South Africa is known as “det fasant.” Hearing a sharp, shrill cackle in the underwood, I turned and saw a brown bird (Francolinus nudicollis) perched on a tree-stump. It belongs to the partridge tribe, and is to be found in many of the wooded and well-watered districts that I afterwards
