70 WANT OF WATER. 



so slowly we should never get there at all. The utmost endeav- 

 ors of the servants, cracking their whips, screaming and beating, 

 got only nineteen miles out of the poor beasts. We had thus 

 proceeded forty-four miles from Serotli ; and the oxen were more 

 exhausted by the soft nature of the country, and the thirst, than 

 if they had traveled double the distance over a hard road con- 

 taining supplies of water : we had, as far as we could judge, still 

 thirty miles more of the same dry work before us. At this season 

 the grass becomes so dry as to crumble to powder in the hands ; 

 so the poor beasts stood wearily chewing, without taking a single 

 fresh mouthful, and lowing painfully at the smell of water in 

 our vessels in the wagons. We were all determined to succeed ; 

 so we endeavored to save the horses by sending them forward 

 with the guide, as a means of making a desperate effort in case 

 the oxen should fail. Murray went forward with them, while 

 Oswell and I remained to bring the wagons on their trail as far 

 as the cattle could drag them, intending then to send the oxen 

 forward too. 



The horses walked quickly away from us ; but, on the morning 

 of the third day, when we imagined the steeds must be near the 

 water, we discovered them just alongside the wagons. The guide, 

 having come across the fresh footprints of some Bushmen who 

 had gone in an opposite direction to that which we wished to go, 

 turned aside to follow them. An antelope had been ensnared in 

 one of the Bushmen's pitfalls. Murray followed Ramotobi most 

 trustingly along the Bushmen's spoor, though that led them away 

 from the water we were in search of; witnessed the operation of 

 slaughtering, skinning, and cutting up the antelope ; and then, 

 after a hard day's toil, found himself close upon the wagons ! 

 The knowledge still retained by Ramotobi of the trackless waste 

 of scrub, through which we were now passing, seemed admirable. 

 For sixty or seventy miles beyond Serotli, one clump of bushes 

 and trees seemed exactly like another ; but, as we walked together 

 this morning, he remarked, "When we come to that hollow we 

 shall light upon the highway of Sekomi ; and beyond that again 

 lies the River Mokoko ;" which, though we passed along it, I could 

 not perceive to be a river-bed at all. 



After breakfast, some of the men, who had gone forward on a 

 little path with some footprints of water-loving animals upon it, 



