That evening we reached Schneeman’s Pan, a rain-pool at which Blockley had appointed that we should wait for him. I amused myself by making some inquiries about the Manansas who were in the place, ascertaining some particulars about their manners and customs, and picking up a few fragments of their language. Most of my information was obtained from one of them who had been taken south by a trader, and who had now hired himself to a farmer here, where he had taken the opportunity of learning Dutch, and by his help I made a list of 305 words and phrases in the dialect of the Manansas or Manandshas. The hunters nickname them Mashapatan.
One day after partaking of some round red-shelled beans I had some very decided symptoms of colic, and discovered that the colouring matter in the shells was injurious, and that the first water in which they were boiled ought to be thrown away; it was always quite violet. The natives, as I afterwards learnt, are particular to observe this precaution.
Vol. II.
Page 107.
ELEPHANT HUNTING.
During our stay some of the Manansas brought us a lot of suet, which they wanted us to buy. Whenever 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. 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.