three to three-and-a-half miles an hour; and in the course of the day crossed the river ten times, either to cut off a bend in the stream or to avoid the full current. Towards the right we had an extensive view of Blockley’s kraal, full of life with its innumerable heads of game and cattle, but towards the south and west we were quite shut in by towering banks of reeds grown up into thickets, which, together with the lagoons they form, are the resort of elephants as well as of hippopotamuses. Finding a deserted hut upon a sandy bank, we resolved to spend the night beneath its shelter.
Several of the men set to work immediately with their knives and assegais to cut down a number of reeds, which they tied together into bundles; others with the same implements dug a series of holes into which the reeds were put upright as props; meanwhile three canoes had been sent across the stream to fetch dry grass which was spread over the top of the supports, and thus in marvellously quick time some huts were erected from four to six feet in height.
Next morning on the left-hand shore we passed the mouth of the Kasha or Kashteja, the river called by Livingstone the Majeela, the name by which it is known amongst the Makololos. A few hundred yards above its mouth the stream was in some places hardly more than fifteen yards wide, but although it was only three feet deep, it was quite unsafe to try to wade across it, on account of the crocodiles with which its seething waters abounded. We met several canoes full of people from Makumba’s town, who had been to Sesheke with ivory for Sepopo, and were now returning, having received a pre-
