independent tribes. Deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding
streams seem never to have been tried here, as in California and
Australia, nor has any machinery been used save common wooden basins for
washing.



CHAPTER II.


Kebrabasa Rapids--Tette--African fever--Exploration of the
Shire--Discovery of Lake Shirwa.

Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we had heard of the
Kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make a short examination of them,
and seized the opportunity of the Zambesi being unusually low, to
endeavour to ascertain their character while uncovered by the water. We
reached them on the 9th of November. The country between Tette and Panda
Mokua, where navigation ends, is well wooded and hilly on both banks.
Panda Mokua is a hill two miles below the rapids, capped with dolomite
containing copper ore.

Conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark coloured
exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Baobab. It often makes the
other trees of the forest look like mere bushes in comparison. A hollow
one, already mentioned, is 74 feet in circumference, another was 84, and
some have been found on the West Coast which measure 100 feet. The lofty
range of Kebrabasa, consisting chiefly of conical hills, covered with
scraggy trees, crosses the Zambesi, and confines it within a narrow,
rough, and rocky dell of about a quarter of a mile in breadth; over this,