and propping up the other on poles, so that from the wood the encampment looked merely like a lot of grass-piles. I had several large fires lighted in front.
During the voyage that had ended so disastrously, I had noticed some trees on the river-bank with a whitish bark, growing from twenty to forty feet in height. What was most remarkable about them was the way in which, from the boughs that overhung the river, masses of red-brown roots descended like a beard, sometimes as much as six feet in length.
The rain fell heavily all the next morning, and in the afternoon the wind blew so icy cold, that although the servants did all they could to cover up the front of my hut with mats, my body suffered from repeated chills. My illness creased so much that I was quite unable to turn myself without assistance. I had a sort of couch extemporized out of some packing-cases, on which I reclined and got what rest I could. While I was lounging in this way, I heard a conversation going on outside the hut amongst my servants, who supposed that I was asleep. One of them, Βorili, was saying that it was a lucky thing that Nyaka (the doctor) was sick, and proposed that they should all make off with my property to the southern bank of the Chobe. The rest of them did not seem altogether inclined to acquiesce, but I made up my mind to nip anything like a conspiracy in the bud. Calling them all in, I made each of them a present of beads, except Boril, whom I asked whether he expected a gun from me when we parted, as a remuneration for his services. Of course he told me he should reckon on his gun;
