Religion & morality > David Livingstone

From Lake Ngami to the Choke.
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with a sense of his importance; he therefore assumed
an air of great consequence, and spoke as if he had
command of the party. Next day they travel on, and
reach a village of the Banajoa, who live on the borders
of the marsh in which the Mababe loses itself. They
live in huts, built on poles, and make a fire in them at
night to smoke away the mosquitoes, which are more
abundant on this river and the Tamunakle, out of which
it flows, than in any other part of the country. They
have lost their corn-crop, and are subsisting on a root
called “tistla,” w'hich contains a quantity of sweet starch.
The women of this tribe shave the hair off their heads ;
they are of darker complexion than the Bechuanas.
Their head-man seemed a simpleton ; but a younger
relative, who acted for him, was intelligent enough ;
under his direction the travellers pursued their journey,
and, crossing the river, soon reached the banks of the
Chobe, in the country of the Makololo, some of whom
met them there, and expressed great delight at seeing
them ; but Sebituane was twenty miles off, down the
river, and Livingstone and Oswell at once proceeded
in canoes to his temporary residence, to which he had
come from a distance of more than one hundred miles
to meet the white men, who he understood were in
search of him.