373 
THE NEW AFRICA 
\ 
surroundings and packing they correctly estimated to be an 
edible; but they prepared it as food, by gravely boiling the 
beans in the same way as they would boil corn, and when 
the food was cooked soft enough, sat down round the pot 
and started to eat it like ordinary mealies. After desperate 
efforts to finish the meal they came to the conclusion that 
white men’s stomachs were differently constituted from those 
of the Mosarwas, to be able to assimilate such vile stuff. 
Selous, who for some time utilised this road to hunt in the 
Mababe district, and other hunters, have suffered many hard¬ 
ships from thirst while traversing this inhospitable road with 
their heavily-laden wagons. 
We considered ourselves exceptionally lucky in finding the 
route so well supplied with water at this time of the year, when 
it is usually dried up. 
After a good rest we departed from the friendly shade of 
a beautiful tree at Malatzwye, late in the afternoon of the 9th 
December, and made a short trek of four and a half miles, 
and then slept till the moon rose, when we made two short 
treks more of six miles each to the Nkawane pan. This pan, 
a large one, was dry, and there was not enough water to fill 
a kettle of respectable size in a hole dug by the trek Boers on 
one side of the pan. Here the distress amongst the trek Boers 
seems to have been greatest; for the fragments of wagons, 
ironwork, etc., lying about were so numerous as to resemble 
the debris of a shipwreck. We rested here, intending to send 
the oxen back to Malatzwye next day to water them, and then 
push through the long thirsty stretch that lay before us, going 
night and day until we reached the water on the other side 
of the famous long Pooh-Pooh sand-belt we now had to cross, 
so named from the frequent calls of the turkey buzzards that 
inhabit this district in great number, whose notes have a deep, 
resonant, metallic chest sound, in effect not unlike the name 
given to the sand-belt. 
Before sending the oxen back, however, I went on to a place 
about a mile ahead to the right, trusting to a tradition that 
