Missionary Travels and Researches in South AfricaLivingstone, David
Religion
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
Livingstone, David
Missions -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
While still at Naliele I walked out to Katongo (lat. 15d 16' 33"), on
the ridge which bounds the valley of the Barotse in that direction, and
found it covered with trees. It is only the commencement of the lands
which are never inundated; their gentle rise from the dead level of the
valley much resembles the edge of the Desert in the valley of the Nile.
But here the Banyeti have fine gardens, and raise great quantities of
maize, millet, and native corn ('Holcus sorghum'), of large grain and
beautifully white. They grow, also, yams, sugar-cane, the Egyptian
arum, sweet potato ('Convolulus batata'), two kinds of manioc or cassava
('Jatropha manihot' and 'J. utilissima', a variety containing scarcely
any poison), besides pumpkins, melons, beans, and ground-nuts. These,
with plenty of fish in the river, its branches and lagoons, wild fruits
and water-fowl, always make the people refer to the Barotse as the land
of plenty. The scene from the ridge, on looking back, was beautiful. One
can not see the western side of the valley in a cloudy day, such as
that was when we visited the stockade, but we could see the great river
glancing out at different points, and fine large herds of cattle quietly
grazing on the green succulent herbage, among numbers of cattle-stations
and villages which are dotted over the landscape. Leches in hundreds
fed securely beside them, for they have learned only to keep out of
bow-shot, or two hundred yards. When guns come into a country the
animals soon learn their longer range, and begin to run at a distance of
five hundred yards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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