possesses similar peculiarities.  When the stagnant rain-water has all soaked in, as must happen during the months in which there is no rain, travelers are even put to straits for want of water.  This is stated on native testimony; but I can very well believe that level plains, in which neither wells nor gullies are met with, may, after the dry season, present the opposite extreme to what we witnessed.  Water, however, could always be got by digging, a proof of which we had on our return when brought to a stand on this very plain by severe fever:  about twelve miles from the Kasai my men dug down a few feet, and found an abundant supply; and we saw on one of the islands the garden of a man who, in the dry season, had drunk water from a well in like manner.  Plains like these can not be inhabited while the present system of cultivation lasts.  The population is not yet so very large as to need them.  They find garden-ground enough on the gentle slopes at the sides of the rivulets, and possess no cattle to eat off the millions of acres of fine hay we were now wading through.  Any one who has visited the Cape Colony will understand me when I say that these immense crops resemble sown grasses more than the tufty vegetation of the south.

I would here request the particular attention of the reader to the phenomena these periodically deluged plains present, because they have a most important bearing on the physical geography of a very large portion of this country.  The plains of Lobale, to the west of this, give rise to a great many streams, which unite, and form the deep, never-failing Chobe.  Similar extensive flats give birth to the Loeti and Kasai, and, as we shall see further on, all the rivers of an extensive region owe their origin to oozing bogs, and not to fountains.

When released from our island by the rain ceasing, we marched on till we came to a ridge of dry inhabited land in the N.W.  The inhabitants, according to custom, lent us the roofs of some huts to save the men the trouble of booth-making.  I suspect that the story in Park’s “Travels”, of the men lifting up the hut to place it on the lion, referred to the roof only.  We leave them for the villagers to replace at their leisure.  No payment is expected for the use of them.  By night it rained so copiously that all our beds were flooded from below; and from this time forth we always made a furrow round each booth, and used the earth to raise our sleeping-places.  My men turned out to work in the wet most willingly; indeed, they always did.  I could not but contrast their conduct with that of Intemese.  He was thoroughly imbued with the slave spirit, and lied on all occasions without compunction.  Untruthfulness is a sort of refuge for the weak and oppressed.  We expected to move on the 4th, but he declared that we were so near Katema’s, if we did not send forward to apprise that chief of our approach, he would certainly impose a fine.  It rained the whole day, so we were reconciled to the