These Sand-Rivers Remove
Vast Masses Of Disintegrated Rock Before It Is Fine Enough To Form Soil.
The Man Who Preceded Me Was Only Thigh-Deep, But The Disturbance Caused
By His Feet Made It Breast-Deep For Me.
The shower of particles and gravel
which struck against my legs gave me the idea that the amount of matter
removed by every freshet must be very great.
In most rivers
where much wearing is going on, a person diving to the bottom
may hear literally thousands of stones knocking against each other.
This attrition, being carried on for hundreds of miles in different rivers,
must have an effect greater than if all the pestles and mortars
and mills of the world were grinding and wearing away the rocks.
The pounding to which I refer may be heard most distinctly in the Vaal River,
when that is slightly in flood. It was there I first heard it.
In the Leeambye, in the middle of the country, where there is
no discoloration, and little carried along but sand, it is not to be heard.
While opposite the village of a head man called Mosusa, a number of elephants
took refuge on an island in the river. There were two males,
and a third not full grown; indeed, scarcely the size of a female.
This was the first instance I had ever seen of a comparatively young one
with the males, for they usually remain with the female herd
till as large as their dams. The inhabitants were very anxious
that my men should attack them, as they go into the gardens on the islands,
and do much damage. The men went, but the elephants ran about half a mile
to the opposite end of the island, and swam to the main land
with their probosces above the water, and, no canoe being near, they escaped.
They swim strongly, with the proboscis erect in the air.
I was not very desirous to have one of these animals killed,
for we understood that when we passed Mpende we came into a country
where the game-laws are strictly enforced. The lands of each chief
are very well defined, the boundaries being usually marked by rivulets,
great numbers of which flow into the Zambesi from both banks,
and, if an elephant is wounded on one man's land and dies on that of another,
the under half of the carcass is claimed by the lord of the soil;
and so stringent is the law, that the hunter can not begin at once
to cut up his own elephant, but must send notice to the lord of the soil
on which it lies, and wait until that personage sends one authorized
to see a fair partition made. If the hunter should begin to cut up
before the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose
both the tusks and all the flesh. The hind leg of a buffalo
must also be given to the man on whose land the animal was grazing,
and a still larger quantity of the eland, which here and every where else
in the country is esteemed right royal food.
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