While still at Naliele I walked out to Katongo (lat. 15d 16’ 33"), on the ridge which bounds the valley of the Barotse in that direction, and found it covered with trees.  It is only the commencement of the lands which are never inundated; their gentle rise from the dead level of the valley much resembles the edge of the Desert in the valley of the Nile.  But here the Banyeti have fine gardens, and raise great quantities of maize, millet, and native corn (’Holcus sorghum’), of large grain and beautifully white.  They grow, also, yams, sugar-cane, the Egyptian arum, sweet potato (’Convolulus batata’), two kinds of manioc or cassava (’Jatropha manihot’ and ‘J. utilissima’, a variety containing scarcely any poison), besides pumpkins, melons, beans, and ground-nuts.  These, with plenty of fish in the river, its branches and lagoons, wild fruits and water-fowl, always make the people refer to the Barotse as the land of plenty.  The scene from the ridge, on looking back, was beautiful.  One can not see the western side of the valley in a cloudy day, such as that was when we visited the stockade, but we could see the great river glancing out at different points, and fine large herds of cattle quietly grazing on the green succulent herbage, among numbers of cattle-stations and villages which are dotted over the landscape.  Leches in hundreds fed securely beside them, for they have learned only to keep out of bow-shot, or two hundred yards.  When guns come into a country the animals soon learn their longer range, and begin to run at a distance of five hundred yards.

I imagined the slight elevation (Katongo) might be healthy, but was informed that no part of this region is exempt from fever.  When the waters begin to retire from this valley, such masses of decayed vegetation and mud are exposed to the torrid sun that even the natives suffer severely from attacks of fever.  The grass is so rank in its growth that one can not see the black alluvial soil of the bottom of this periodical lake.  Even when the grass falls down in winter, or is “laid” by its own weight, one is obliged to lift the feet so high, to avoid being tripped up by it, as to make walking excessively fatiguing.  Young leches are hidden beneath it by their dams; and the Makololo youth complain of being unable to run in the Barotse land on this account.  There was evidently no healthy spot in this quarter; and the current of the river being about four and a half miles per hour (one hundred yards in sixty seconds), I imagined we might find what we needed in the higher lands, from which the river seemed to come.  I resolved, therefore, to go to the utmost limits of the Barotse country before coming to a final conclusion.  Katongo was the best place we had seen; but, in order to accomplish a complete examination, I left Sekeletu at Naliele, and ascended the river.  He furnished me with men, besides my rowers, and among the rest a herald, that I might enter his villages in what is