Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/202

 find would be satisfied with shirts or pieces of calico. The king moreover undertook to order all the tribes along the river to supply my party with whatever provisions should be requisite. He strongly advised me to wend my way northwards towards Lake Bangweolo, a route, he said, by which I should be able to dispense with canoes and to travel with bearers, and which would be at once more convenient to him and less dangerous to myself.

I have since very much repented that I did not follow this advice, but at that time I was under the conviction that I should be doing much more for the advancement of science by following the Zambesi to its source; I likewise thought that I should find the canoe-voyage less fatiguing to myself, so that my strength might be reserved for the prolonged land-journey that would come after.

My next proceeding might have been at once to return to Panda ma Tenka to conclude my necessary preparations, but I did not leave Sesheke for another day or two, and amused myself on one occasion by going to inspect the site selected for the new town. I came upon a very animated and interesting scene; the building-operations were in full swing, and the river was alive with canoes laden with grass, stakes, and reeds, some going straight along the stream, and some crossing from bank to bank. On the shore, men and women in single file were carrying loads of grass in bundles that almost swept the ground behind them; others were conveying long poles, from which were suspended the great clay vessels, in which the store of corn was being removed from the old granary to the new. Every here and there was what might be called a peripatetic roof,