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 122 MEETING WITH ME. MACABE. Chap. VI. 



Mr. J. Macabe returning from Lake Nganii, which he had 

 succeeded in reaching by going right across the Desert from a 

 point a little to the south of Kolobeng. The accounts of the 

 abundance of water-melons were amply confirmed by this 

 energetic traveller, for having these in vast quantities his cattle 

 subsisted on the fluid contained in them for a period of no less 

 than twenty-one days ; and when at last they reached a supply of 

 water they did not seem to care much about it. Commg to the 

 lake from the south-east, he crossed the Teoughe, and w r ent 

 round the northern part of it, and is the only European traveller 

 who had actually seen it all. His estimate of the extent of the 

 lake is higher than that given by Mr. swell and myself, or 

 from about ninety to one hundred miles in circumference. 

 Before the lake was discovered Macabe wrote a letter in one 

 of the Cape papers recommending a certain route as likely to 

 lead to it. The Transvaal Boers fined him 500 dollars for writing 

 about " onze velt," our country, and imprisoned him too till the 

 fine was paid. I now learned from his own lips that the public 

 report of this is true. Mr. Macabe's companion, Mahar, was mis- 

 taken by a tribe of Barolongs for a Boer, and shot as he approached 

 their village. When Macabe came up and explained that he was 

 an Englishman, they expressed the utmost regret, and helped to 

 bury him. Tins was the first case in recent times of an English- 

 man being slain by the Bechuanas. We afterwards heard that 

 there had been some fighting between these Barolongs and the 

 Boers, and that there had been capturing of cattle on both sides. 

 If this was true, I can only say that it was the first time that I 

 ever heard of cattle being taken by Bechuanas. Tins was a 

 Caffre war in stage the second ; the third stage in the develop- 

 ment is when both sides are equally well armed and afraid of each 

 other ; the fourth, when the English take up a quarrel not their 

 own, and the Boers slip out of the fray. 



Two other English gentlemen crossed and recrossed the Desert 

 about the same time, and nearly in the same direction. On 

 returning, one of them, Captain Shelley, while riding forward on 

 horseback, lost himself, and was obliged to find his way alone 

 to Kuraman, some hundreds of miles distant. Beaching that 

 station shirtless, and as brown as a Griqua, he was taken for one 

 by Mrs. Moffat, and was received by her with a salutation in 



