A TRACKLESS DESERT 183 



it is true, not more than a bare hundred miles 

 of desert to cross, but the only definite infor- 

 mation we had been able to gain as to the route 

 was to the effect that it led through a tract 

 practically waterless and extremely difficult to 

 traverse. Moreover, it was reported to be ab- 

 solutely uninhabited. One thing was quite 

 clear, we should have to travel with oxen; 

 horses would have been useless under the con- 

 ditions as described. 



Andries arrived bringing not the comfort- 

 able, tilted, spring-wagon, but the strong, 

 heavy, tentless " buck " wagon, with a team of 

 sixteen picked oxen. He seemed uneasy as 

 to our prospects, for the coast desert had a bad 

 reputation and we were about to plunge into 

 a wilderness with the conditions of which he 

 was unfamiliar. The map was produced, but 

 Andries rather despises maps. This one 

 shewed little beyond " gaps " and " unhabit- 

 able downs." But it indicated, roughly, our 

 obvious route. We would travel alongside the 

 copper-trolley line as far as Anenous, which 

 lay at the foot of the mountain range and thus 

 on the inner margin of the coast desert, which 

 is little, if at all, above the level of the sea. 

 From Anenous we had to trend to the north- 

 west, past Tarabies, Lekkersing and the north- 



