While passing across these interminable-looking plains, the eye rests with pleasure on a small flower, which exists in such numbers as to give its own hue to the ground.  One broad band of yellow stretches across our path.  On looking at the flowers which formed this golden carpet, we saw every variety of that color, from the palest lemon to the richest orange.  Crossing a hundred yards of this, we came upon another broad band of the same flower, but blue, and this color is varied from the lightest tint to dark blue, and even purple.  I had before observed the same flower possessing different colors in different parts of the country, and once a great number of liver-colored flowers, which elsewhere were yellow.  Even the color of the birds changed with the district we passed through; but never before did I see such a marked change as from yellow to blue, repeated again and again on the same plain.  Another beautiful plant attracted my attention so strongly on these plains that I dismounted to examine it.  To my great delight I found it to be an old home acquaintance, a species of Drosera, closely resembling our own sundew (’Drosera Anglia’).  The flower-stalk never attains a height of more than two or three inches, and the leaves are covered with reddish hairs, each of which has a drop of clammy fluid at its tip, making the whole appear as if spangled over with small diamonds.  I noticed it first in the morning, and imagined the appearance was caused by the sun shining on drops of dew; but, as it continued to maintain its brilliancy during the heat of the day, I proceeded to investigate the cause of its beauty, and found that the points of the hairs exuded pure liquid, in, apparently, capsules of clear, glutinous matter.  They were thus like dewdrops preserved from evaporation.  The clammy fluid is intended to entrap insects, which, dying on the leaf, probably yield nutriment to the plant.

During our second day on this extensive plain I suffered from my twenty-seventh attack of fever, at a part where no surface-water was to be found.  We never thought it necessary to carry water with us in this region; and now, when I was quite unable to move on, my men soon found water to allay my burning thirst by digging with sticks a few feet beneath the surface.  We had thus an opportunity of observing the state of these remarkable plains at different seasons of the year.  Next day we pursued our way, and on the 8th of June we forded the Lotembwa to the N.W. of Dilolo, and regained our former path.

The Lotembwa here is about a mile wide, about three feet deep, and full of the lotus, papyrus, arum, mat-rushes, and other aquatic plants.  I did not observe the course in which the water flowed while crossing; but, having noticed before that the Lotembwa on the other side of the Lake Dilolo flowed in a southerly direction, I supposed that this was simply a prolongation of the same river beyond Dilolo, and that it rose in this large marsh, which we had not seen in our progress