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Leaving Motlatsa on the 8th of February, 1853, we passed down the Mokoko, which, in the memory of persons now living, was a flowing stream. We ourselves once saw a heavy thunder-shower make it assume its ancient appearance of running to the north.
After giving the cattle a rest at this spot, we proceeded down the dry bed of the River Mokoko. The name refers to the water-bearing stratum before alluded to; and in this ancient bed it bears enough of water to admit of permanent wells in several parts of it. We had now the assurance from Ramotobi that we should suffer no more from thirst.
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 observed that, wherever an ant-eater had made his hole, shells were thrown out with the earth, identical with those now alive in the lake. When we left the Mokoko, Ramotobi seemed, for the first time, to be at a loss as to which direction to take. He had passed only once away to the west of the Mokoko, the scenes of his boyhood. Mr.
Twice we found rain-water in the Mokoko before we reached Mokokonyani, where the water, generally below ground elsewhere, comes to the surface in a bed of tufa. The ancient Mokoko must have been joined by other rivers below this, for it becomes very broad, and spreads out into a large lake, of which the lake we were now in search of formed but a very small part.
Ludolphus it may be is a little too strict with Vossius for calling them Nani; he may only mean a sort of Men in that Country of less Stature than ordinary. And Dapper in his History of Africa, from whom Vossius takes this Account, describes such in the Kingdom of Mokoko, he calls Mimos, and tells us that they kill Elephants.
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