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The water having at last flowed into the wells we had dug in sufficient quantity to allow a good drink to all our cattle, we departed from Serotli in the afternoon; but as the sun, even in winter, which it now was, is always very powerful by day, the wagons were dragged but slowly through the deep, heavy sand, and we advanced only six miles before sunset.
Departure from Kolobeng, 1st June, 1849 Companions Our Route Abundance of Grass Serotli, a Fountain in the Desert Mode of digging Wells The Eland Animals of the Desert The Hyaena The Chief Sekomi Dangers The wandering Guide Cross Purposes Slow Progress Want of Water Capture of a Bushwoman The Salt-pan at Nchokotsa The Mirage Reach the River Zouga The Quakers of Africa Discovery of Lake Ngami, 1st August, 1849 Its Extent Small Depth of Water Position as the Reservoir of a great River System The Bamangwato and their Chief Desire to visit Sebituane, the Chief of the Makololo Refusal of Lechulatebe to furnish us with Guides Resolve to return to the Cape The Banks of the Zouga Pitfalls Trees of the District Elephants New Species of Antelope Fish in the Zouga.
Our guide belonged to Sekomi's tribe, but had fled to Sechele; as fugitives in this country are always well received, and may even afterward visit the tribe from which they had escaped, Ramotobi was in no danger, though doing that which he knew to be directly opposed to the interests of his own chief and tribe. All around Serotli the country is perfectly flat, and composed of soft white sand.
At Serotli we found only a few hollows like those made by the buffalo and rhinoceros when they roll themselves in the mud. In a corner of one of these there appeared water, which would have been quickly lapped up by our dogs, had we not driven them away. And yet this was all the apparent supply for some eighty oxen, twenty horses, and about a score of men.
But should a traveler see the "spoor" of a rhinoceros, or buffalo, or zebra, he would at once follow it up, well assured that before he had gone many miles he would certainly reach water. In the evening of our second day at Serotli, a hyaena, appearing suddenly among the grass, succeeded in raising a panic among our cattle.
Sekomi had given orders to fill up the wells which we had dug with so much labor at Serotli, so we took the more eastern route through the Bamangwato town and by Letloche. That chief asked why I had avoided him in our former journeys. I replied that my reason was that I knew he did not wish me to go to the lake, and I did not want to quarrel with him.
For sixty or seventy miles beyond Serotli, one clump of bushes and trees seemed exactly like another; but, as we walked together this morning, he remarked, "When we come to that hollow we shall light upon the highway of Sekomi; and beyond that again lies the River Mokoko;" which, though we passed along it, I could not perceive to be a river-bed at all.
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 traveled 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.
Many of his cattle burst away from him in the phrensy of thirst, and rushed back to Serotli, then a large piece of water, and to Mashue and Lopepe, the habitations of their original owners.
Having watered the cattle at a well called Lobotani, about N.W. of Bamangwato, we next proceeded to a real Kalahari fountain, called Serotli. The country around is covered with bushes and trees of a kind of leguminosae, with lilac flowers. The soil is soft white sand, very trying to the strength of the oxen, as the wheels sink into it over the felloes and drag heavily.
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