CHAPTER XXI 
Cross the Ngamasero or Qaudum River—Hear of white man taken prisoner by 
Moremi’s people—Makubas confirm the overflow of water from Cubango 
to Chobe—No game—Short of food—Shoot crocodile—Vast swamps of the 
Cubango—Bush buck dangerous—Take quinine prophylactically—Cool east 
wind—The Waacht een beetje thorn (Wait a bit thorn)—Meet native elephant 
hunter—Almost step on leopard—We walk into hunter’s camp and are made 
prisoners—Elephant’s biltong—Morning devotions. 
With the next day’s inarch we reached a mixed village of 
Mombokooshus and Makalakas, who seemed to fraternise 
heartily together. Their kraal was situated on an island, in 
a wet laagte, where the retreating winter flood had left them 
surrounded by mud and debris of questionably healthy odour, 
while a stream flowed river-wards down the middle of the 
laagte. This stream, we were informed, came a long way from 
the west-north-west, and was called 'Ngamasero,’ and also 
'Qaudum’ (Qowdum), but I should be afraid to assign the 
derivation of its water to any other source than the overflow 
of the Cubango, as it appeared to possess too little current of its 
own to warrant the belief in a separate river. Here, also, we 
again saw mopani trees, the first since passing through the 
mopani forest, just below Moheni’s on the Chobe. We heard 
a report from the natives that a white man accompanied 
by three Matabele spies had been taken prisoner by Moremi’s 
men, near the lake, and was now at the king’s village We 
crossed the Qowdum (Q has a linguo-palatal click) in water 
up to our middles, then proceeded across several dried valleys 
and sand-belts, and camped in a beautiful little dry opening 
in the bush, where the massing mosquitoes compelled us to 
erect our muslin tents for the first time on the trip. We made 
only sixteen miles in the last two days. 
