Livingstone has already made us familiar with Lake Ngami and the banks of the lower Cuando. These are the furthest outposts of equatorial moisture toward the south, just as Lake Chad and the White Nile mark its northern limits. Once, it is supposed——and indeed the fact seems beyond dispute——the Zambesi, and all its upper branches, flowed down into this southern basin and formed a goodly inland sea, until some great cataclysm happened, that diverted it and its waters toward the eastern coast, leaving the central lake to be dried up into the shallow Ngami, and the streams of this region to wander about haphazard and uncertain whether to keep in the old tracks or follow in the new direction. [Illustration: HUNTING THE ELEPHANT.] The discovery of the Cuando River by Livingstone in 1849 demolished the theory of a burning desert occupying the interior of Africa from the Mediterranean to the Cape, and went far to prove, what has since been completely established, that the fabulous torrid zone of Africa, and its burning sands, is a well watered region, resembling North America in its mountains and lakes, and India in its hot humid plains, thick jungles, and cool highlands. We have already seen that the South African desert is not without vegetation, but its pride and glory are herds of big and small game——antelopes, gnues, zebras, ostriches, elands, gemsbocks, gazelles, various species of deer——that roam over its spacious plains. Great deeds of slaughter have been done with the rifle, and told over and over again in many a stirring book of African sport by Gunning, Anderson, and other Nimrods, who were among the first of the army of hunters who now annually go in search of hides, tusks, and horns, which every year become more difficult to obtain. The lion is practically the only animal of the cat tribe which they have to encounter, the tiger being unknown in Africa, and the leopard comparatively rare. The lion seem to be more at home in these salt deserts than in the rank forests further north, probably because he finds food more plentiful. Livingstone had no great opinion of this beast. He describes him as “about the size of a donkey and only brave at roaring,” even the talk of his majestic roar he regards as “majestic twaddle,” and he says he could never tell the voice of the lion from the voice of an ostrich, except from knowing that the quadruped made a noise by night and the bird by day. The lion would never dream of putting himself against a noble elephant, though he will tear an elephant calf if he finds one unprotected, and he would still less engage in a contest with the thick skinned rhinoceros. Even a buffalo is more than a match for the “King of Beasts.” Major Oswald once came across three lions who were having much trouble in pulling a mortally wounded buffalo to the ground.