We were not informed of his death until the next day.  The burial of a Bechuana chief takes place in his cattle-pen, and all the cattle are driven for an hour or two around and over the grave, so that it may be quite obliterated.  We went and spoke to the people, advising them to keep together and support the heir.  They took this kindly; and in turn told us not to be alarmed, for they would not think of ascribing the death of their chief to us; that Sebituane had just gone the way of his fathers; and though the father had gone, he had left children, and they hoped that we would be as friendly to his children as we intended to have been to himself.

He was decidedly the best specimen of a native chief I ever met.  I never felt so much grieved by the loss of a black man before; and it was impossible not to follow him in thought into the world of which he had just heard before he was called away, and to realize somewhat of the feelings of those who pray for the dead.  The deep, dark question of what is to become of such as he, must, however, be left where we find it, believing that, assuredly, the “Judge of all the earth will do right.”

At Sebituane’s death the chieftainship devolved, as her father intended, on a daughter named Ma-mochisane.  He had promised to show us his country and to select a suitable locality for our residence.  We had now to look to the daughter, who was living twelve days to the north, at Naliele.  We were obliged, therefore, to remain until a message came from her; and when it did, she gave us perfect liberty to visit any part of the country we chose.  Mr. Oswell and I then proceeded one hundred and thirty miles to the northeast, to Sesheke; and in the end of June, 1851, we were rewarded by the discovery of the Zambesi, in the centre of the continent.  This was a most important point, for that river was not previously known to exist there at all.  The Portuguese maps all represent it as rising far to the east of where we now were; and if ever any thing like a chain of trading stations had existed across the country between the latitudes 12 Deg. and 18 Deg. south, this magnificent portion of the river must have been known before.  We saw it at the end of the dry season, at the time when the river is about at its lowest, and yet there was a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred yards of deep flowing water.  Mr. Oswell said he had never seen such a fine river, even in India.  At the period of its annual inundation it rises fully twenty feet in perpendicular height, and floods fifteen or twenty miles of lands adjacent to its banks.

The country over which we had traveled from the Chobe was perfectly flat, except where there were large ant-hills, or the remains of former ones, which had left mounds a few feet high.  These are generally covered with wild date-trees and palmyras, and in some parts there are forests of mimosae and mopane.  Occasionally the country between the Chobe and Zambesi is flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying near the Chobe or on its banks.  The Makololo were living among these swamps for the sake of the protection the deep reedy rivers afforded them against their enemies.