On the lower part of the Leeba the scenery becomes very beautiful and richly diversified. The alternation of hill and dale, open glade and forest, past which the canoe bears us swiftly, reminds one of a carefully kept park. Animal life becomes more plentiful with every mile of southward progress, and the broad meadows bordering the stream are pastured by great herds of wild animals—buffaloes, antelopes, zebras, elephants, and rhinoceri,—all of which may be slaughtered in scores before they take alarm.
Below the confluence of the Leeba with the Zambesi, the abundance of game on the banks of the river is more remarkable. The air is found darkened by the flight of innumerable water fowl, fish-hawks, cranes, and waders of many varieties. The earth teems with insect life and the waters swarm with fish life. As an instance of the prodigious quantity and exceeding tameness of wild animals here, Livingstone mentions that “eighty-one buffaloes marched in slow procession before our fire one evening within gun shot, and herds of splendid deer sat by day without fear at two hundred yards distance, while all through the night the lions were heard roaring close to the camp.” In the heat of the day sleek elands, tall as ordinary horses, with black glossy bodies and delicately striped skins, browsed or reclined in the shade of the forest trees. Troops of graceful, agile antelopes, of similar species, scour across the pasture lands to seek the cool retreat of some deep dell in the woods, or a
solitary rhinoceros comes grunting down to the bank in search of some soft place where he can roll his horny hide in the mud. The trees themselves have a variety and beauty which the sombre evergreen foliage of higher latitudes lacks, and which is equally wanting in the dust colored groves of the desert further south.
The voyage down the stream is by no means without incident. The river swarms with hippopotami and crocodiles. The former lead a lazy sleepy life by day in the bottom of the stream, coming now and then to the surface to breathe and exchange a snort of recognition with their acquaintances, and are only too well pleased to let the passer by go in peace, if he will but let them alone. In districts where they are hunted, they are wary and take care to push no more than the tip of their snouts out of the water, or lie in some bed of rushes where they breathe so softly that they cannot be heard. But in a place where they have not been disturbed, they can be seen swimming about, and sometimes the female hippopotamus can be seen with the little figure of her calf floating on her neck. Certain elderly males who are expelled from the herd become soured in temper and are dangerous to encounter, and so also is a mother if robbed of her young. Such a one made an attack on Livingstone’s boat, when descending the Zambesi in 1855, butting it from beneath until the fore end stood out of water, and throwing one of the natives into the stream. By diving and holding on to the grass at the bottom, while the angry beast was looking for him on the surface, he escaped its vengeance and, the boat being fortunately close to the shore, the rest of the crew got off unharmed. The alligators of this part of the Zambesi are peculiarly rapacious and aggressive, and the chances are that anybody unlucky enough to fall into the river will find his way into the mouth of a watchful crocodile. Every year these ferocious reptiles carry off hundreds of human victims, chiefly women, while filling their water jars, or men whose canoes are accidently upset, and the inhabitants in their turn make a prey of the beast, being extremely fond of its flesh and eggs. The crocodile attacks by surprise. He lurks behind the bank of rushes, or lies in wait
at the bottom of a pool, and dashes out as soon as he sees a human limb in the water. Sometimes, however, when hungry and where favorable opportunity occurs, he will haul his body ashore and waddle up the bank on his stumpy legs. If, while disporting himself on shore, his wicked green eyes fall on some likely victim in the stream, he will dash rapidly through the rushes, plunge into the river and make a bound for his prey. The young crocodiles show their vicious temper almost as soon as they are out of the shell, and one savage little wretch about two feet long made a snap at Dr. Livingstone’s legs, while walking along the side of a stream in the Zambesi region, that made the explorer jump aside with more agility than dignity.
ANIMAL LIFE ON THE ZAMBESI.
Some distance below the junction of the Leeba, the Zambesi enters the valley of the Barotse. This is one of the most fertile, yet the most unhealthy, districts in the interior of Africa. It is stocked with great herds of domestic cattle of two varieties. One very tall with enormous horns, nearly nine feet between the tips, and the other a beautifully formed little white breed. The country could grow grain enough to support ten times the inhabitants it has at present. Like the lower valley of the Nile, the Barotse country is inundated every year, over its whole surface, by the waters of the river, which deposit a layer of fertilizing slime. The banks of the Zambesi, for some distance above and below this district, are high and cliffy, presenting ridge after ridge of fine rock and pleasing scenery, while the stream runs swiftly over its stony bed. For a hundred miles through the Barotse valley the stream has a deep and winding course and the hills withdraw to a distance of fifteen miles from either bank. To the foot of these hills the waters extend in flood time, and the valley becomes temporarily one of the lake regions of Central Africa.
At the lower end of the valley the rocky spurs again approach each other, and the river forces its way through a narrow defile in which, in flood time, the water rises to a height of sixty feet above its original level. Here are situated the Gonye Falls which are a serious impediment to the navigation of the Upper Zambesi. But there is no such danger or difficulty
here for canoes as poor Stanley met with on the Congo. Practice has made the natives, living near the falls, experts in the work of transporting these canoes over the rocky ground and, as soon as a boat approaches the rapids from above or below, it is whisked without difficulty by a pair of sturdy arms to the quiet water beyond. Below the Gonye Falls, the water bounds and rolls and bounces from bank to bank and chafes over the boulders in an alarming manner, their breadth being contracted to a few hundred yards. But these swollen rapids might all be ascended, Livingstone thinks, when the river is full. After many leagues of this mad gamboling, the Zambesi settles down again for a hundred miles to sober flow, and opens out into a magnificent navigable river a mile or two from bank to bank.