e wagons were dragged but slowly
through the deep, heavy sand, and we advanced only six miles before
sunset. We could only travel in the mornings and evenings, as a single
day in the hot sun and heavy sand would have knocked up the oxen. Next
day we passed Pepacheu (white tufa), a hollow lined with tufa, in which
water sometimes stands, but it was now dry; and at night our trocheamer*
showed that we had made but twenty-five miles from Serotli.

* This is an instrument which, when fastened on the wagon-wheel,
records the number of revolutions made. By multiplying this number
by the circumference of the wheel, the actual distance traveled over
is at once ascertained.

Ramotobi was angry at the slowness of our progress, and told us that,
as the next water was three days in front, if we traveled so slowly we
should never get there at all. The utmost endeavors of the servants,
cracking their whips, screaming and beating, got only nineteen miles out
of the poor beasts. 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. At this season
the grass becomes so dry as to crumble to powder in the hands; so
the poor beasts stood wearily chewing, without taking a single fresh
mouthful, and lowing painfully at the smell of water in our vessels in
the wagons. We were all determined to succeed; so we endeavored to save
the horses by sending them forward with the guide, as a means of making
a desperate effort in case the oxen should fail. Murray went forward
with them, while Oswell and I remained to bring the wagons on their
trail as far as the cattle could drag them, intending then to send the
oxen forward too.

The horses walked quickly away from us; but, on the morning of the third
day, when we imagined the steeds must be near the water, we discovered
them just alongside the wagons. The guide, having come across the fresh
footprints of some Bushmen who had gone in an opposite direction to that
which we wished to go, turned aside to follow them. An antelope had been
ensnared in one of the Bushmen's pitfalls. Murray followed Ramotobi most
trustingly along the Bushmen's spoor, though that led them away from
the water we were in search of; witnessed the operatio