50 WANT OF WATER. 



only six miles before sunset. We ceroid only travel in 

 the mornings and evenings, as a single day in the hot sun 

 and heavy sand would have knocked up the oxen. Next 

 day we passed Pepacheu (white tufa), a hollow lined 

 with tufa, in which water sometimes stands, but it was now 

 dry ; and at night our trocheamer* showed that we had 

 made but twenty-five miles from Serotli. 



Ramotobi was angry at the slowness of our progress, 

 and told us that, as the next water was three days in front, 

 if we travelled so slowly we should never get there at all. 

 The utmost endeavours 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 travelled double the distance over a hard road 

 containing 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 

 waggons. We were all determined to succeed ; so we 

 endeavoured 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 waggons 

 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 waggons. 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 



* This is an instrument which, when fastened s on the waggon-wheel, 

 records the number of revolutions made. By multiplying this number 

 by the circumference of the wheel the actual distance travelled over is 

 at once ascertained. 



