Plains like these can not be inhabited while the present system of cultivation lasts.

The population is not yet so very large as to need them.

They find garden-ground enough on the gentle slopes at the sides of the rivulets, and possess no cattle to eat off the millions of acres of fine hay we were now wading through.

Any one who has visited the Cape Colony will understand me when I say that these immense crops resemble sown grasses more than the tufty vegetation of the south.
I would here request the particular attention of the reader to the phenomena these periodically deluged plains present, because they have a most important bearing on the physical geography of a very large portion of this country.

The plains of Lobale, to the west of this, give rise to a great many streams, which unite, and form the deep, never-failing Chobe.