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Updated: June 12, 2025
But throughout the afternoon the only sign of man or beast that I saw was a lot of sotol plants recently uprooted, and their roots eaten by bears. Shortly after dark we reached the only permanent water in the cañon, a clear, cold, sweet spring, bursting out from beneath a rock, only to sink immediately into the arid sands of the dry stream-bed.
Bwana Kingozi considered, glancing at the setting sun, and again up the dry stream-bed where, as far as the eye could reach, were no more indications of water. "No," he decided. "It is late. Soon the lions will be hunting. I will go." The men sprawled in abandon. After an interval a shrill whistle sounded from the direction in which Bwana Kingozi had disappeared.
I laid aside my coat, chaps and rifle, feeling that the business ahead was stern and difficult. Then I faced the canyon. Down slopes, among rocks, under piñons, around yellow walls, along slides, the two big men followed me with heavy steps. We reached the white stream-bed, and sliding, slipping, jumping, always down and down, we came at last within sound of the hounds.
Three months later. The western slant of the Sierras just where the cañon clefts begin to spread into foothills. On a flat near too near the stream-bed was a typical placer-mining camp of the day. That is, three or four large, rough buildings in a row, twenty or thirty log cabins scattered without order, and as many tents.
So it was my destiny to learn that water is the greatest thing on earth. I hung over a three-foot hole in a dry stream-bed, and watched it ooze and seep through the sand, and fill up oh, so slowly; and I felt it loosen my parched tongue, and steal through all my dry body with strength and life. Water is said to constitute three fourths of the universe.
A single tree, apparently growing out of the great stream-bed, showed shallow water as we passed the Ponte de tres Palmeiras; the three oil- palms are still there, but the easternmost is decaying. At 2 P.M. we were in sight of the chief slaving settlement on the Congo, the Whydah of the river, Porto da Lenha. Our charts have "Ponta de Linha," three mistakes in as many words.
It was a crazy affair constructed of logs laterally laid and held in place by uprights, with walls that looked to be just able to hold together while suffering under the constant threat of collapse. The place was roofed with a thatch of reeds taken from the adjacent stream-bed, and its doorway was protected by a sheet of tattered sacking.
Evidently he had tried to trek along a steep, rocky bank which overhung a stream, with the result that the wagon had fallen into the stream-bed, then almost dry, and been smashed beyond repair.
Suddenly the creek took a sharp turn round a jutting bluff, and as he passed beyond it he reined in his horse. Scarce twenty yards in front was a sheet of water, its surface, without a ripple, reflecting the tree-clad slopes that encompassed it. In the sand of the stream-bed the track was so strong it might have been made only a few hours ago. He rode warily to the water's edge.
Most of them avoided the mouth of the ravine and hurried by to the left or right, but one little clump, eight or ten, came up the dry stream-bed, and stopped a hundred and fifty yards from his hiding-place to make a stand. They were Hindus, with outsize helmets over their turbans.
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