WITH LIVINGSTONE IN SOUTH AFRICA 149 



to sell men, but they sat there day after day, and showed us 

 fresh cloths so beautiful that you would have sold your grand- 

 mother for them. Then I somehow remembered there were 

 men whom we had taken in our last raid. And I at length 

 consented to part with them. But they were not many, and 

 they wanted more. I said I had none ; if I sold now it 

 must be my own people, and I would not do that. Then they 

 asked, " Don't you want oxen ? " What could I say doesn't a 

 chief always want oxen ? " Well, as we came here, about five days 

 off we passed through a country where the oxen were like the 

 grass for number. Lend us 400 or 500 of your warriors, and 

 we will help with our guns, and let us attack that tribe. We will 

 take the men and women, and you shall take the oxen." 

 What could I say ? This appeared a very good plan to me, so 

 we attacked. They got two great tens (200) of men and 

 women, and I got all those cattle/ pointing to a plain on which 

 a herd of these diminutive little creatures were feeding. I fon- 

 get whether Livingstone described them, but they were most 

 remarkably small things, like sturdy Durham oxen three feet high. 

 There was not the least difficulty in carrying them about bodily ; 

 we put one into a waggon, hoping to bring it out, but it died. 

 Pretty little gentle beasts, I wish I had taken more trouble to 

 secure specimens. When the men milked them they held them 

 by the hind leg as you would a goat. On the other hand, by 

 the shores of Lake 'Ngami, a gigantic long-horned breed is 

 found, stolen in a raid from the Ba-Wangketsi thirty years 

 before our visit. They were originally remarkable for their 

 heads, but in four or five generations, from feeding on the 

 silicious coated reeds and succulent grasses near the lake, had 

 developed wonderfully in horns and height. Through Living- 

 stone I obtained one 6 ft. 2 in. high, with horns measuring 

 from tip to tip 8 ft. 7 in. and 14 ft. 2 in. round from one 

 point to the other taking in the base of the skull. We had 

 cleared a way for the waggons through the bush, but had in 

 many places on our return to widen it for my ox. I hoped to 

 have brought him home and to have presented him to the 



