Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/141

 ever a well-fed eland is killed the suet is all melted down in a clay vessel, and preserved in small bags made of the platoides of the animal. Others brought a quantity of greenish-brown honey with an acid flavour, a mild aperient, having quite a stupifying effect when eaten freely. The bees from which it is procured are very small, and are without stings; and from the description which was given of them, I should imagine that they are identical in species with those that I saw in the north of the sandy forest.

Blockley, with two servants, returned in good time on the 8th, and we lost no time in proceeding on our way, in order to get through another district of the tsetse-wood during the night. In due time we reached the upper Leshumo valley, a narrow strip of land bordered by sandy heights, in which the waggon was to be left behind; the oxen were taken out, and were driven back to Schneeman’s Pan as quickly as possible, so as to be clear of the troublesome insects before daybreak.

A messenger was hence despatched to Impalera, a village on the other side of the Chobe, requesting Makumba, the chief of the Masupias, a subject tribe to the Marutse, to send a sufficient number of bearers to carry the merchandise to the Zambesi. Meanwhile we went a little way down the valley, which we found both marshy and rocky, with a number of springbocks continually darting out of the grass in one spot, to take refuge in another lower down.

On a slope which we reached in the course of the next hour, we noticed an immense number of elephant tracks, showing beyond a doubt that an enormous herd had passed that way during the previous night.