While laying his plans
and gathering information, the opportune arrival of Messrs.
Oswell and Murray,
two wealthy Englishmen who had become enamored with African hunting,
enabled him to undertake the proposed expedition, Mr. Oswell agreeing
to pay the guides, who were furnished by Sechele.
This expedition, which resulted in the discovery of Lake Ngami,
set out from the missionary station at Kolobeng on the 1st of June, 1849.
The way lay across the great Kalahari desert, seven hundred miles in breadth.
This is a singular region. Though it has no running streams,
and few and scanty wells, it abounds in animal and vegetable life.
Men, animals, and plants accommodate themselves singularly
to the scarcity of water. Grass is abundant, growing in tufts;
bulbous plants abound, among which are the `leroshua', which sends up
a slender stalk not larger than a crow quill, with a tuber,
a foot or more below the surface, as large as a child's head, consisting of
a mass of cellular tissue filled with a cool and refreshing fluid;
and the `mokuri', which deposits under ground, within a circle of a yard
from its stem, a mass of tubers of the size of a man's head.
During years when the rains are unusually abundant, the Kalahari is covered
with the `kengwe', a species of water-melon. Animals and men rejoice
in the rich supply; antelopes, lions, hyenas, jackals, mice, and men
devour it with equal avidity.
The people of the desert conceal their wells with jealous care.
They fill them with sand, and place their dwellings at a distance,
that their proximity may not betray the precious secret.
The women repair to the wells with a score or so of ostrich shells
in a bag slung over their shoulders. Digging down an arm's-length,
they insert a hollow reed, with a bunch of grass tied to the end,
then ram the sand firmly around the tube. The water slowly filters
into the bunch of grass, and is sucked up through the reed,
and squirted mouthful by mouthful into the shells. 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. It lies two thousand feet above the level of the sea,
and as much below the southern border of the Kalahari, which slopes gradually
toward the interior.
Their desire to visit Sebituane, whose residence was considerably farther
in the interior, was frustrated by the jealousy of Lechulatebe,
a chief near the lake, and the expedition returned to the station at Kolobeng.
The attempt was renewed the following year. Mrs. Livingstone,
their three children, and Sechele accompanied him. The lake was reached.
Lechulatebe, propitiated by the present of a valuable gun, agreed to furnish
guides to Sebituane's country; but the children and servants fell ill,
and the attempt was for the time abandoned.
A third expedition was successful, although the whole party
came near perishing for want of water, and their cattle,
which had been bitten by the `Tsetse', died.
This insect - the `Glossina moritans' of the naturalists -
deserves a special paragraph. It is a brown insect about as large
as our common house-fly, with three or four yellow bars
across its hinder part. A lively, buzzing, harmless-looking fellow
is the tsetse. Its bite produces a slight itching similar to that
caused by the mosquito, and in the case of men and some species of animals
no further ill effects follow. But woe to the horse, the ox, and the dog,
when once bitten by the tsetse. No immediate harm appears;
the animal is not startled as by the gad-fly; but in a few days
the eyes and the nose begin to run; the jaws and navel swell;
the animal grazes for a while as usual, but grows emaciated and weak,
and dies, it may be, weeks or months after. When dissected,
the cellular tissue seems injected with air, the fat is green and oily,
the muscles are flabby, the heart is so soft that the finger
may be pushed through it. The antelope and buffalo, the zebra and goat,
are not affected by its bite; while to the ox, the horse, and the dog
it is certain death. The mule and donkey are not troubled by it,
nor are sucking calves, while dogs, though fed upon milk, perish.
Such different effects produced upon animals whose nature is similar,
constitute one of the most curious phenomena in natural history.
Sebituane, who had heard of the approach of his visitors,
came more than a hundred miles to meet them. He was a tall, wiry,
coffee-and-milk colored man, of five-and-forty. His original home
was a thousand miles to the south, in the Bakwain country,
whence he had been driven by the Griquas a quarter of a century before.
He fled northward, fighting his way, sometimes reduced to the utmost straits,
but still keeping his people together.
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