by right of chieftainship, the breast of every animal slaughtered either at home or abroad, and he most obligingly sent us a liberal share during the whole period of our sojourn.  But these supplies were necessarily so irregular that we were sometimes fain to accept a dish of locusts.  These are quite a blessing in the country, so much so that the rain-doctors sometimes promised to bring them by their incantations.  The locusts are strongly vegetable in taste, the flavor varying with the plants on which they feed.  There is a physiological reason why locusts and honey should be eaten together.  Some are roasted and pounded into meal, which, eaten with a little salt, is palatable.  It will keep thus for months.  Boiled, they are disagreeable; but when they are roasted I should much prefer locusts to shrimps, though I would avoid both if possible.

In traveling we sometimes suffered considerably from scarcity of meat, though not from absolute want of food.  This was felt more especially by my children; and the natives, to show their sympathy, often gave them a large kind of caterpillar, which they seemed to relish; these insects could not be unwholesome, for the natives devoured them in large quantities themselves.

Another article of which our children partook with eagerness was a very large frog, called “Matlametlo".*

* The Pyxicephalus adspersus of Dr. Smith.  Length of head and body, 5-1/2 inches; fore legs, 3 inches; hind legs, 6 inches.  Width of head posteriorly, 3 inches; of body, 4-1/2 inches.

These enormous frogs, which, when cooked, look like chickens, are supposed by the natives to fall down from thunder-clouds, because after a heavy thunder-shower the pools, which are filled and retain water a few days, become instantly alive with this loud-croaking, pugnacious game.  This phenomenon takes place in the driest parts of the desert, and in places where, to an ordinary observer, there is not a sign of life.  Having been once benighted in a district of the Kalahari where there was no prospect of getting water for our cattle for a day or two, I was surprised to hear in the fine still evening the croaking of frogs.  Walking out until I was certain that the musicians were between me and our fire, I found that they could be merry on nothing else but a prospect of rain.  From the Bushmen I afterward learned that the matlametlo makes a hole at the root of certain bushes, and there ensconces himself during the months of drought.  As he seldom emerges, a large variety of spider takes advantage of the hole, and makes its web across the orifice.  He is thus furnished with a window and screen gratis; and no one but a Bushman would think of searching beneath a spider’s web for a frog.  They completely eluded my search on the occasion referred to; and as they rush forth into the hollows filled by the thunder-shower when the rain is actually falling, and the Bechuanas are cowering under their skin garments, the sudden chorus struck up simultaneously from all sides seems to indicate a descent from the clouds.