164 CAPTAIN TUCKEY'S NARRATIVE. 



The impossibility of procuring information to be at 

 all depended on from the natives, respecting the course 

 of the river or the nature of the country, proceeds equally 

 from their want of curiosity, extreme indolence, and 

 constant state of war with each other. Hence, I have never 

 been able to procure a guide farther than from banza to 

 banza, or at the utmost a day's journey ; for at every banza 

 we were assured that, after passing the next, we should get 

 into the Bushmen's country, where they would be in danger 

 of being shot or kidnapped. Thus at Cooloo, it was only 



