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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 557 of 572
Words from 297594 to 298121
of 306638
