The
sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained the
clothes we expected to wear out in the journey, which, with a small tent
just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a
horse rug as a bed, completed my equipment. An array of baggage would
have probably excited the cupidity of the tribes through whose country
we wished to pass."
The voyage up the Chobe, and the Zambesi after the junction of those
rivers, was prosperous but slow, in consequence of stoppages opposite
villages. "My man Pitsane knew of the generous orders of Sekeletu, and
was not disposed to allow them remain a dead letter." In the rapids,
"the men leaped into the water without the least hesitation to save the
canoes from being dashed against the obstructions or caught in eddies.
They must never be allowed to come broadside to the stream, for being
flat-bottomed they would at once be capsized and everything in them
lost." When free from fever he was delighted to note the numbers of
birds, several of them unknown, which swarmed on the river and its
banks, all carefully noted in his journal.
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