CHAPTER V. 



The Kalahari Desert. — Sekomi and his People. — Discovers Lake Ngami. — Visits 

 Sebituane. — Death of Sebituane. — Discovers the Zambesi. 



ON the first of June, 1849, Livingstone started on his long contemplated 

 journey, to settle the existence of Lake Ngami and visit the numerous 

 tribes occupying the intervening country. He was accompanied by Messrs. 

 Murray and Oswell, two enterprising Englishmen, who, in addition to the 

 mere love of sport and adventure, were anxious to be of service in extending 

 our knowledge of the geography of Central Africa. Just before starting, a 

 number of people from the lake district came to Kolobeng, with an invitation 

 from their chief, Lechulatebe, to Livingstone to visit him. These gave so 

 glowing an account of the wealth of the district near the lake in ivory and 

 skins, that the Bakwain guides were as eager to proceed as the strangers were. 

 The Kalahari desert, which lay between the travellers and the goal of 

 their hopes, covers a space of country extending from the Orange River in the 

 south about 29°, to Lake Ngami in the north, and from about 24° east longi- 

 tude to near the west coast. It is not strictly speaking a desert, as it is 

 covered with coarse grass and several kinds of creeping plants, with here and 

 there clumps of wood and patches of bushes. It is intersected by dry water- 

 courses, which rarely contain any water, although at no distant period they 

 were the channels by which the superabundant waters caused by the rains 

 farther north found their way to some parent stream, fertilizing the country 

 in their passage. But for the number of bulbous plants which are edible, 

 human life could not be sustained in this now arid region, unless during the 

 most favourable seasons. The more prominent of these are a scarlet-coloured 

 cucumber ; the leroshua, a small plant with long narrow leaves and a stalk no 

 thicker than the stem of a tobacco pipe, springing from a tuber from four to six 

 inches in diameter, which, " when the rind is removed, we found to be a mass 

 of cellular tissue, filled with a fluid much like that of a young turnip." The 

 mokuri, another plant of the same kind, is a creeping plant, to which are 

 attached several tubers as large as a man's head. The water melon is the 

 most important and abundant of these edible plants, vast tracts being literally 

 covered with it in seasons when the rainfall has been larger than ordinary, 

 when it serves both as meat and drink to the passing travellers and their oxen, 

 and affords a plentiful support to the numerous families and little colonies of 

 Bushmen, who have taken refuge in the desert. 



