brushwood. In one place where the water had worn itself a way between two of the rocky islands, I noticed some well-constructed fish-weels very similar to those we use in Europe. Birds, especially swamp-birds, were very numerous, having taken up their quarters both on the rocks and on the shore. I was confirmed in my conviction that the river was very full of crocodiles; and at the rapids (which, by the way, I named the Blockley rapids) I noticed some water-lizards.
Our camp in the evening of the same day was visited by a party of seventeen Masupias. They were fine-looking men, with their hair tied up at the top of their heads in little tufts, and adorned with ornaments of great variety, bunches of the hair of gazelles or other small animals, pieces of coral, and strings of beads. They also wore bracelets, mostly of leather, occasionally of ivory. I bought everything that they had brought with them in the way of assegais, knives, kaffir-corn and beans, paying them in beads and calico. One of the men to whom I had given a knife on the previous day brought me a clay pitcher made by their women and full of butshuala (kaffir-corn beer); it was an offering on his part, I was given to understand, that established between us the relationship of “mulekow,” that is to say, I had henceforth the right to claim anything I liked in his house; it is a custom of the nation that sometimes results in much that is evil, as even the women of the household are included in the licence; and when a few days later I was in Impalera it seemed to excite a good deal of astonishment that I made no further use of my mulekow privilege than
