We had to go on so far before finding a suitable spot to spend the night in, that the natives concluded we did not intend to share the meat with them, and returned to the village.We slept two nights at the place where the hippopotamus was cut up.The crocodiles had a busy time of it in the dark, tearing away at what was left in the river, and thrashing the water furiously with their powerful tails.
The hills on both sides of Kariba are much like those of Kebrabasa, the strata tilted and twisted in every direction, with no level ground.
Although the hills confine the Zambesi within a narrow channel for a number of miles, there are no rapids beyond those near the entrance.
The river is smooth and apparently very deep.Only one single human being was seen in the gorge, the country being too rough for culture.
Some rocks in the water, near the outlet of Kariba, at a distance look like a fort; and such large masses dislocated, bent, and even twisted to a remarkable degree, at once attest some tremendous upheaving and convulsive action of nature, which probably caused Kebrabasa, Kariba, and the Victoria Falls to assume their present forms; it took place after the formation of the coal, that mineral having then been tilted up.We have probably nothing equal to it in the present quiet operations of nature.
On emerging we pitched our camp by a small stream, the Pendele, a few miles below the gorge.The Palabi mountain stands on the western side of the lower end of the Kariba strait; the range to which it belongs crosses the river, and runs to the south-east.Chikumbula, a hospitable old headman, under Nchomokela, the paramount chief of a large district, whom we did not see, brought us next morning a great basket of meal, and four fowls, with some beer, and a cake of salt, "to make it taste good."Chikumbula said that the elephants plagued them, by eating up the cotton-plants; but his people seem to be well off.
A few days before we came, they caught three buffaloes in pitfalls in one night, and, unable to eat them all, left one to rot.During the night the wind changed and blew from the dead buffalo to our sleeping-place; and a hungry lion, not at all dainty in his food, stirred up the putrid mass, and growled and gloated over his feast, to the disturbance of our slumbers.Game of all kinds is in most extraordinary abundance, especially from this point to below the Kafue, and so it is on Moselekatso's side, where there are no inhabitants.The drought drives all the game to the river to drink.
An hour's walk on the right bank, morning or evening, reveals a country swarming with wild animals:vast herds of pallahs, many waterbucks, koodoos, buffaloes, wild pigs, elands, zebras, and monkeys appear; francolins, guinea-fowls, and myriads of turtledoves attract the eye in the covers, with the fresh spoor of elephants and rhinoceroses, which had been at the river during the night.Every few miles we came upon a school of hippopotami, asleep on some shallow sandbank; their bodies, nearly all out of the water, appeared like masses of black rock in the river.When these animals are hunted much, they become proportionably wary, but here no hunter ever troubles them, and they repose in security, always however taking the precaution of sleeping just above the deep channel, into which they can plunge when alarmed.When a shot is fired into a sleeping herd, all start up on their feet, and stare with peculiar stolid looks of hippopotamic surprise, and wait for another shot before dashing into deep water.A few miles below Chikumbula's we saw a white hippopotamus in a herd.Our men had never seen one like it before.
It was of a pinkish white, exactly like the colour of the Albino.It seemed to be the father of a number of others, for there were many marked with large light patches.The so-called WHITE elephant is just such a pinkish Albino as this hippopotamus.A few miles above Kariba we observed that, in two small hamlets, many of the inhabitants had a similar affection of the skin.The same influence appeared to have affected man and beast.A dark coloured hippopotamus stood alone, as if expelled from the herd, and bit the water, shaking his head from side to side in a most frantic manner.
When the female has twins, she is said to kill one of them.
We touched at the beautiful tree-covered island of Kalabi, opposite where Tuba-mokoro lectured the lion in our way up.The ancestors of the people who now inhabit this island possessed cattle.The tsetse has taken possession of the country since "the beeves were lifted."
