The Horses Walked Quickly Away From Us; But, On The Morning Of The Third Day,
When We Imagined The Steeds Must Be Near The Water, We Discovered Them
Just Alongside The Wagons.
The guide, having come across
the fresh footprints of some Bushmen who had gone in an opposite direction
to
That which we wished to go, turned aside to follow them.
An antelope had been ensnared in one of the Bushmen's pitfalls.
Murray followed Ramotobi most trustingly along the Bushmen's spoor,
though that led them away from the water we were in search of;
witnessed the operation of slaughtering, skinning, and cutting up
the antelope; and then, after a hard day's toil, found himself
close upon the wagons! The knowledge still retained by Ramotobi
of the trackless waste of scrub, through which we were now passing,
seemed admirable. For sixty or seventy miles beyond Serotli,
one clump of bushes and trees seemed exactly like another;
but, as we walked together this morning, he remarked,
"When we come to that hollow we shall light upon the highway of Sekomi;
and beyond that again lies the River Mokoko;" which,
though we passed along it, I could not perceive to be a river-bed at all.
After breakfast, some of the men, who had gone forward on a little path
with some footprints of water-loving animals upon it, returned with
the joyful tidings of "metse", water, exhibiting the mud on their knees
in confirmation of the news being true. It does one's heart good
to see the thirsty oxen rush into a pool of delicious rain-water,
as this was.
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