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Most geographers are aware that, before the discovery of Lake Ngami and the well-watered country in which the Makololo dwell, the idea prevailed that a large part of the interior of Africa consisted of sandy deserts, into which rivers ran and were lost.
The present central and meridian zone of waters, whether lakes or marshes, extending from Lake Tchad to Lake 'Ngami, with hippopotami on their banks, are therefore but the great modern residual geographical phenomena of those of a mesozoic age. The differences, however, between the geological past of Africa and her present state are enormous.
Similar indications exist of the former existence of other immense bodies of water, which have in like manner been drained by fissures through the surrounding elevations, leaving shallow lakes at the lowest points. Such are, undoubtedly, Tsad at the north, Ngami at the south, Dilolo at the west, and Taganyika and Nyanja, of which we have only vague reports, at the east.
I was much distressed at this calamity; my faithful Richarn was dead, and the double-barrelled Purdey that he carried was lost; this belonged to my friend Oswell, of South African and Lake Ngami celebrity; it was a much-prized weapon, with which he had hunted for five years all the heavy game of Africa with such untiring zeal that much of the wood of the stock was eaten away by the "wait a bit" thorns in his passage on horseback at full speed through the jungles.
They thus daringly attack the hippopotami in their haunts, or pursue the swift antelope which ventures to swim across the river. After voyaging on the stream for twelve days, they reached the broad expanse of Lake Ngami. Though wide, it is excessively shallow, and brackish during the rainy season. They here heard of the Tamunacle and other large rivers flowing into the lake.
The space from the Orange River in the south, lat. 29 Degrees, to Lake Ngami in the north, and from about 24 Degrees east long. to near the west coast, has been called a desert simply because it contains no running water, and very little water in wells.
It proved to be closely allied to a water-boc found by Livingstone on the Ngami Lake; but, instead of being striped, was very faintly spotted, and so long were its toes, it could hardly walk on the dry ground; whilst its coat, also well adapted to the moist element it lived in, was long, and of such excellent quality that the natives prize it for wearing almost more than any other of the antelope tribe.
The exact position of Lake Ngami had, for half a century at least, been correctly pointed out by the natives, who had visited it when rains were more copious in the desert than in more recent times, and many attempts had been made to reach it by passing through the desert in the direction indicated; but it was found impossible, even for Griquas, who, having some Bushman blood in them, may be supposed more capable of enduring thirst than Europeans.
Sekwebu, who had never seen a larger body of water than the shallow Lake Ngami, was terrified. "Is this the way you go?" he inquired. "Yes; don't you see it is?" replied Livingstone, encouragingly. When Livingstone reached his countrymen on the ship he could scarcely speak his native language; the words would not come at his call.
J. Macabe returning from Lake Ngami, which he had succeeded in reaching by going right across the Desert from a point a little to the south of Kolobeng.
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