are strictly enforced.  The lands of each chief are very well defined, the boundaries being usually marked by rivulets, great numbers of which flow into the Zambesi from both banks, and, if an elephant is wounded on one man’s land and dies on that of another, the under half of the carcass is claimed by the lord of the soil; and so stringent is the law, that the hunter can not begin at once to cut up his own elephant, but must send notice to the lord of the soil on which it lies, and wait until that personage sends one authorized to see a fair partition made.  If the hunter should begin to cut up before the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose both the tusks and all the flesh.  The hind leg of a buffalo must also be given to the man on whose land the animal was grazing, and a still larger quantity of the eland, which here and every where else in the country is esteemed right royal food.  In the country above Zumbo we did not find a vestige of this law; and but for the fact that it existed in the country of the Bamapela, far to the south of this, I should have been disposed to regard it in the same light as I do the payment for leave to pass—­an imposition levied on him who is seen to be weak because in the hands of his slaves.  The only game-laws in the interior are, that the man who first wounds an animal, though he has inflicted but a mere scratch, is considered the killer of it; the second is entitled to a hind quarter, and the third to a fore leg.  The chiefs are generally entitled to a share as tribute; in some parts it is the breast, in others the whole of the ribs and one fore leg.  I generally respected this law, although exceptions are sometimes made when animals are killed by guns.  The knowledge that he who succeeds in reaching the wounded beast first is entitled to a share stimulates the whole party to greater exertions in dispatching it.  One of my men, having a knowledge of elephant medicine, was considered the leader in the hunt; he went before the others, examined the animals, and on his decision all depended.  If he decided to attack a herd, the rest went boldly on; but if he declined, none of them would engage.  A certain part of the elephant belonged to him by right of the office he held, and such was the faith in medicine held by the slaves of the Portuguese whom we met hunting, that they offered to pay this man handsomely if he would show them the elephant medicine.

When near Mosusa’s village we passed a rivulet called Chowe, now running with rain-water.  The inhabitants there extract a little salt from the sand when it is dry, and all the people of the adjacent country come to purchase it from them.  This was the first salt we had met with since leaving Angola, for none is to be found in either the country of the Balonda or Barotse; but we heard of salt-pans about a fortnight west of Naliele, and I got a small supply from Mpololo while there.  That had long since been finished, and I had again lived two months without salt, suffering no inconvenience except an occasional longing for animal food or milk.