When all are filled,
the women gather up their load and trudge homeward.
Elands, springbucks, koodoos, and ostriches somehow seem to get along
very well without any moisture, except that contained in the grass
which they eat. They appear to live for months without drinking;
but whenever rhinoceroses, buffaloes, or gnus are seen,
it is held to be certain proof that water exists within a few miles.
The passage of the Kalahari was effected, not without considerable difficulty,
in two months, the expedition reaching Lake Ngami on the 1st of August.
As they approached it, they came upon a considerable river.
"Whence does this come?" asked Livingstone.
"From a country full of rivers," was the reply; "so many that no man
can tell their number, and full of large trees."
This was the first actual confirmation of the report of the Bakwains
that the country beyond was not the large "sandy plateau" of geographers.
The prospect of a highway capable of being traversed by boats
to an unexplored fertile region so filled the mind of Livingstone that,
when he came to the lake, this discovery seemed of comparatively
little importance. To us, indeed, whose ideas of a lake are formed
from Superior and Huron, the Ngami seems but an insignificant affair.
Its circumference may be seventy or a hundred miles, and its mean depth
is but a few feet.
