"Have These Hunters,
Who Come So Far And Work So Hard, No Meat At Home?" - "Why, These Men
Are Rich,
And could slaughter oxen every day of their lives." - "And yet
they come here, and endure so much thirst for
The sake of this dry meat,
none of which is equal to beef?" - "Yes, it is for the sake of play besides"
(the idea of sport not being in the language). This produces a laugh,
as much as to say, "Ah! you know better;" or, "Your friends are fools."
When they can get a man to kill large quantities of game for them,
whatever HE may think of himself or of his achievements,
THEY pride themselves in having adroitly turned to good account
the folly of an itinerant butcher.
The water having at last flowed into the wells we had dug
in sufficient quantity to allow a good drink to all our cattle,
we departed from Serotli in the afternoon; but as the sun, even in winter,
which it now was, is always very powerful by day, the wagons were dragged
but slowly through the deep, heavy sand, and we advanced only six miles
before sunset. We could only travel in the mornings and evenings,
as a single day in the hot sun and heavy sand would have knocked up the oxen.
Next day we passed Pepacheu (white tufa), a hollow lined with tufa,
in which water sometimes stands, but it was now dry; and at night
our trocheamer* showed that we had made but twenty-five miles from Serotli.
-
* This is an instrument which, when fastened on the wagon-wheel,
records the number of revolutions made. By multiplying this number
by the circumference of the wheel, the actual distance traveled over
is at once ascertained.
-
Ramotobi was angry at the slowness of our progress, and told us that,
as the next water was three days in front, if we traveled so slowly
we should never get there at all. 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 57 of 572
Words from 30618 to 31138
of 306638
