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.
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