traveler; for, having
these in vast quantities, his cattle subsisted on the fluid contained in
them for a period of no less than twenty-one days; and when at last
they reached a supply of water, they did not seem to care much about it.
Coming to the lake from the southeast, he crossed the Teoughe, and went
round the northern part of it, and is the only European traveler who had
actually seen it all. His estimate of the extent of the lake is higher
than that given by Mr. Oswell and myself, or from about ninety to one
hundred miles in circumference. Before the lake was discovered, Macabe
wrote a letter in one of the Cape papers recommending a certain route
as likely to lead to it. The Transvaal Boers fined him 500 dollars for
writing about "ouze felt", OUR country, and imprisoned him, too, till
the fine was paid. I now learned from his own lips that the public
report of this is true. Mr. Macabe's companion, Mahar, was mistaken by a
tribe of Barolongs for a Boer, and shot as he approached their village.
When Macabe came up and explained that he was an Englishman, they
expressed the utmost regret, and helped to bury him. This was the first
case in recent times of an Englishman being slain by the Bechuanas.
We afterward heard that there had been some fighting between these
Barolongs and the Boers, and that there had been capturing of cattle on
both sides. If this was true, I can only say that it was the first time
that I ever heard of cattle being taken by Bechuanas. This was a Caffre
war in stage the second; the third stage in the development is when both
sides are equally well armed and afraid of each other; the fourth, when
the English take up a quarrel not their own, and the Boers slip out of
the fray.

Two other English gentlemen crossed and recrossed the Desert about the
same time, and nearly in the same direction. On returning, one of them,
Captain Shelley, while riding forward on horseback, lost himself, and
was obliged to find his way alone to Kuruman, some hundreds of miles
distant. Reaching that station shirtless, and as brown as a Griqua,
he was taken for one by Mrs. Moffat, and was received by her with a
salutation in Dutch, that being the language spoken by this people.
His sufferings must have been far more severe than any we endured. The
result of the exertions of both Shelley and Macabe is to prove that
the general view of the Desert always given by the natives has been
substantially correct.

Occasionally