The Utmost Endeavors Of The Servants,
Cracking Their Whips, Screaming And Beating, Got Only Nineteen Miles
Out Of The Poor Beasts.
We had thus proceeded forty-four miles from Serotli;
and the oxen were more exhausted by the soft nature of the country,
and the thirst, than if they had traveled double the distance over a hard road
containing supplies of water:
We had, as far as we could judge,
still thirty miles more of the same dry work before us. At this season
the grass becomes so dry as to crumble to powder in the hands;
so the poor beasts stood wearily chewing, without taking
a single fresh mouthful, and lowing painfully at the smell of water
in our vessels in the wagons. We were all determined to succeed;
so we endeavored to save the horses by sending them forward with the guide,
as a means of making a desperate effort in case the oxen should fail.
Murray went forward with them, while Oswell and I remained
to bring the wagons on their trail as far as the cattle could drag them,
intending then to send the oxen forward too.
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. In they dash until the water is deep enough to be nearly level
with their throat, and then they stand drawing slowly in
the long, refreshing mouthfuls, until their formerly collapsed sides
distend as if they would burst. So much do they imbibe, that a sudden jerk,
when they come out on the bank, makes some of the water run out again
from their mouths; but, as they have been days without food too,
they very soon commence to graze, and of grass there is always
abundance every where. This pool was called Mathuluani;
and thankful we were to have obtained so welcome a supply of water.
After giving the cattle a rest at this spot, we proceeded down
the dry bed of the River Mokoko. The name refers to the water-bearing stratum
before alluded to; and in this ancient bed it bears enough of water
to admit of permanent wells in several parts of it. We had now
the assurance from Ramotobi that we should suffer no more from thirst.
Twice we found rain-water in the Mokoko before we reached Mokokonyani,
where the water, generally below ground elsewhere, comes to the surface
in a bed of tufa. The adjacent country is all covered with low, thorny scrub,
with grass, and here and there clumps of the "wait-a-bit thorn",
or `Acacia detinens'. At Lotlakani (a little reed), another spring
three miles farther down, we met with the first Palmyra trees
which we had seen in South Africa; they were twenty-six in number.
The ancient Mokoko must have been joined by other rivers below this,
for it becomes very broad, and spreads out into a large lake,
of which the lake we were now in search of formed but a very small part.
We observed that, wherever an ant-eater had made his hole,
shells were thrown out with the earth, identical with those
now alive in the lake.
When we left the Mokoko, Ramotobi seemed, for the first time,
to be at a loss as to which direction to take. He had passed only once
away to the west of the Mokoko, the scenes of his boyhood. Mr. Oswell,
while riding in front of the wagons, happened to spy a Bushwoman running away
in a bent position, in order to escape observation. Thinking it to be a lion,
he galloped up to her. She thought herself captured, and began to deliver up
her poor little property, consisting of a few traps made of cords;
but, when I explained that we only wanted water, and would pay her
if she led us to it, she consented to conduct us to a spring.
It was then late in the afternoon, but she walked briskly before our horses
for eight miles, and showed us the water of Nchokotsa.
After leading us to the water, she wished to go away home,
if indeed she had any - she had fled from a party of her countrymen,
and was now living far from all others with her husband -
but as it was now dark, we wished her to remain. As she believed herself
still a captive, we thought she might slip away by night; so, in order that
she should not go away with the impression that we were dishonest,
we gave her a piece of meat and a good large bunch of beads;
at the sight of the latter she burst into a merry laugh,
and remained without suspicion.
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