294 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



the ground alongside the reed, some inches below the mouth of 

 the sucker. A straw guides the water into the hole of the vessel, 

 as the woman draws mouthful after mouthful from below. The 

 water is made to pass along the outside, not through the straw. 

 If any one will attempt tc squirt water into a bottle placed some 

 distance below his mouth, he will soon perceive the wisdom of 

 the Bushwoman's contrivance for giving the stream direction by 

 means of a straw. The whole stock of water is thus passed 

 through the woman's mouth as a pump, and, when taken home, 

 is carefully buried. 



A DREARY MARCH ACROSS THE DESERT. 



To turn from such a refreshing scene the bubbling spring, 

 that wells up like an eternal joy and picture a hoary waste, 

 whitened by the glare of a scorching sun, one vast sheen of 

 trackless, waterless, arid desert, is not a pleasurable transforma- 

 tion ; yet we must now view Livingstone on his march across the 

 Bakalahari desert in quest of new fields, untrodden by the Euro- 

 pean. It was on the 1st of June, 1849, that he, in company with 

 three English hunters, started upon the march, provided with 

 oxen and horses to convey their baggage, and guides to direct the 

 way. From the beginning the journey was a painful one, for 

 there was a sandy stretch before them over which it was most 

 difficult + ,o draw the wagons. The distance from Mabotsa to Lake 

 Ngami is about three hundred and fifty miles, two points west of 

 north. Water was nowhere obtainable on the route except at 

 Bushman settlements, which were so far apart that the party 

 often went for forty hours without wetting their parched lips. 

 Oxen are naturally slow travelers, but in this burning waste they 

 sometimes made only six miles a day, being so nearly overcome 

 by heat and thirst that any attempt to drive them further would 

 have caused their death. Hartebeests and antelopes were very 

 numerous notwithstanding the want of water, which led Living- 

 stone to examine the alimentary canal of several that he killed, in 

 order that he might discover by what peculiar endowment nature 

 enabled them to subsist without water so long ; but he found 

 nothing in them that was not common to other animals. 



