The Country Around Is Covered
With Bushes And Trees Of A Kind Of Leguminosae, With Lilac Flowers.
The Soil Is Soft White Sand, Very Trying To The Strength Of The Oxen,
As The Wheels Sink Into It Over The Felloes And Drag Heavily.
At Serotli
we found only a few hollows like those made by the buffalo and rhinoceros
when they roll themselves in the mud.
In a corner of one of these
there appeared water, which would have been quickly lapped up by our dogs,
had we not driven them away. And yet this was all the apparent supply
for some eighty oxen, twenty horses, and about a score of men.
Our guide, Ramotobi, who had spent his youth in the Desert, declared that,
though appearances were against us, there was plenty of water at hand.
We had our misgivings, for the spades were soon produced;
but our guides, despising such new-fangled aid, began in good earnest
to scrape out the sand with their hands. The only water we had any promise of
for the next seventy miles - that is, for a journey of three days
with the wagons - was to be got here. By the aid of both spades and fingers
two of the holes were cleared out, so as to form pits
six feet deep and about as many broad. Our guides were especially earnest
in their injunctions to us not to break through the hard stratum of sand
at the bottom, because they knew, if it were broken through,
"the water would go away." They are quite correct, for the water seems to lie
on this flooring of incipient sandstone.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 98 of 1070
Words from 28756 to 29030
of 306638
