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They find support from the astonishing quantity of grass which grows in the region, as also from a species of water-melon, and from several tuberous roots, the most curious of which is the leroshua, as large as the head of a young child, and filled with a fluid like that of a turnip.
We halted only once, to give the oxen some water-melons or leroshua roots, and to take a little food and water-melon ourselves, I found that Kate and Bella had become very anxious, because one of the Hottentot boys, who spoke a little English, had been telling them all sorts of stories of the ferocity of the natives, and of the way they had attacked travellers and carried off their oxen.
The plant to which I at present refer is one of the cucurbitaceae, which bears a small, scarlet-colored, eatable cucumber. Another plant, named Leroshua, is a blessing to the inhabitants of the Desert.
Grass is abundant, growing in tufts; bulbous plants abound, among which are the 'leroshua', which sends up a slender stalk not larger than a crow quill, with a tuber, a foot or more below the surface, as large as a child's head, consisting of a mass of cellular tissue filled with a cool and refreshing fluid; and the 'mokuri', which deposits under ground, within a circle of a yard from its stem, a mass of tubers of the size of a man's head.
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