HINDRANCES TO PROGRESS. 
391 
could not gripe the brute in return. She was the 
gamest of the game, and had had numberless escapes, 
wonderful, lucky, or providential, whatever you like 
to call them. Except my perfect Juno, I had sooner 
the fate had happened to any other of the pack. 
The country here is frightfully heavy white sand ; 
and the air is so dry, and the sand so sharp, that my 
wagon-wheel is completely gone. We have driven 
in no end of wedges, and it is so bound round with 
buffalo hide as to be almost hidden from sight. An 
old Boer, however, says he will put new spokes in for 
me, and the dissel-boom is about to be sacrificed 
for that purpose. 
19 th. — Mateste .—I have but little idea of my 
whereabouts, as I hear such contradictory statements 
from the Kaffirs. None of us can properly under¬ 
stand the language, which is a great drawback ; but 
I have come to the conclusion the Kaffirs themselves 
do not know, or at any rate will not tell the way to 
the Zambesi, or give us any idea of the distance. 
One man positively affirms that it is only four days, 
the next that it is a month, the next never heard 
the name of the river ; and they are one and all so 
stupid and utterly indifferent, that I have given up en¬ 
quiry, and hold always due north. I have only treked 
four days since last logging up, two very hard ones 
without water, and then we came to an entirely dif¬ 
ferent country, bare and thinly wooded, with plenty 
of small hills in every direction, lots of fountains and 
running water. I have crossed two rivers, and fancy 
one must be the Guaka. 
