Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/142

 The separate footprints were not more than an inch deep in the sand, but they extended over an area twenty yards or more wide. From the profusion of stems, boughs, and bushes with which the ground was littered, it was evident that they had rushed along with furious impetuosity; the stems in some instances were as thick as my arm, and trees of double the size had been snapped off, except as far as they were kept from falling by a strip of bark; several of the larger trunks had been broken off with such violence, that the remaining stump was left cleft open to the very root; many of the branches, too, had been torn away with tremendous force, and long shreds of the ragged bark hung waving in the air.

Some fine mimosas afforded a delicious shade, their crowns being too leafy for the sunshine to penetrate; and as we left the depression in which they were growing, we found that the soil became more and more level, till all at once it suddenly sloped down again into the valleys of the Chobe and the Zambesi.

Here was the realization of the vision of my youth! Here I was actually gazing on the stream that had mingled itself with my boyish dreams! Never shall I forget the panorama that then broke upon my view, nor the emotion with which I gazed on the valley beneath me.

It took me a few minutes to collect my thoughts. The valley in front stretched away three miles to the right, being bounded on the left by a plain that seemed absolutely unlimited. On the side on which I stood it was overhung by wooded rocks. In the middle of it were two islands, formed by the imperfect