standing gazing at us in wonder.  The people live on the hills, and, having no guns, seldom disturb the game.  They have never been visited, even by half-castes; but Babisa traders have come occasionally.  Continuous rains kept us for some time on the banks of the Chiponga, and here we were unfortunate enough to come among the tsetse.  Mr. J. N. Gray, of the British Museum, has kindly obliged me with a drawing of the insect, with the ravages of which I have unfortunately been too familiar. (For description, see p. 94-96 [Chapter 4 Paragraphs 16-20].) No. 1 is the insect somewhat smaller than life, from the specimen having contracted in drying; they are a little larger than the common house-fly.  No. 2 is the insect magnified; and No. 3 shows the magnified proboscis and poison-bulb at the root.*

* Unfortunately, these illustrations can not be presented in this ASCII text.  Fortunately, information on the Tsetse is no longer difficult to find.  The “somewhat smaller than life” drawing is about 1 cm from head to tail, not including wings or proboscis.—­A.  L., 1997.

We tried to leave one morning, but the rain coming on afresh brought us to a stand, and after waiting an hour, wet to the skin, we were fain to retrace our steps to our sheds.  These rains were from the east, and the clouds might be seen on the hills exactly as the “Table-cloth” on Table Mountain.  This was the first wetting we had got since we left Sesheke, for I had gained some experience in traveling.  In Londa we braved the rain, and, as I despised being carried in our frequent passage through running water, I was pretty constantly drenched; but now, when we saw a storm coming, we invariably halted.  The men soon pulled grass sufficient to make a little shelter for themselves by placing it on a bush, and, having got my camp-stool and umbrella, with a little grass under my feet, I kept myself perfectly dry.  We also lighted large fires, and the men were not chilled by streams of water running down their persons, and abstracting the heat, as they would have been had they been exposed to the rain.  When it was over they warmed themselves by the fires, and we traveled on comfortably.  The effect of this care was, that we had much less sickness than with a smaller party in journeying to Loanda.  Another improvement made from my experience was avoiding an entire change of diet.  In going to Loanda I took little or no European food, in order not to burden my men and make them lose spirit, but trusted entirely to what might be got by the gun and the liberality of the Balonda; but on this journey I took some flour which had been left in the wagon, with some got on the island, and baked my own bread all the way in an extemporaneous oven made by an inverted pot.  With these precautions, aided, no doubt, by the greater healthiness of the district over which we passed, I enjoyed perfect health.