saw an object that looked like
the waggon lying on its side: no one was near it, and there was no sign
of a fire. What could be the matter? We walked up quickly to the spot,
but first went to the vlei, for a little water. Here the catastrophe
was explained. Instead of water, a thick mud-paste covered the ground;
large circular holes, nearly a foot deep, and two feet in diameter,
were, as it seemed, dug all over it; one or two large flat places looked
as if the vlei had been rolled with the trunks of trees; these had been
baked with the sun, and were nearly hard and dry,--not so much as a drop
of water.

"A troop of bull-elephants had rolled in the mud and trodden all the
water away.

"Not content with that, they had either through rage or curiosity upset
the waggon, broken one wheel off, and scattered everything about. My
Hottentot and Kaffirs no doubt had bolted on the first appearance of the
elephants, without so much as firing a shot to try and drive them away.
The oxen had also fled; and there we were, with a few biscuits, biltong,
powder, shot, and guns, a hundred miles from help. This distance would
have been `nix' (nothing) if we could only have procured water; but I
knew of none within forty miles, and we had now been forty-eight hours
without quenching our thirst.

"I lay down on the ground in despair. The ivory I had collected was
scattered all about; I thought I never should convey half of it to my
home.

"Home! How was _I_ ever to reach home?

"I said to Karl, `You are stronger than I am, you go on, _you_ may get
to water soon, but I am so weak I must stop here and die.'

"`Ne, bas,' (no, sir), said Karl; `let us try on the other side.'

"I thought, if I could only shoot a buck, I would not hesitate a moment
about drinking his blood; in this idea a hope dawned upon me, and I
struggled on.

"Towards the middle of the day Karl pointed out a moving object some
distance from us. We stopped to look at it, when Karl exclaimed,
`Wasser soon, bas.'

"`Why, how?' I asked.

"`That is reitbok,' he said: `where reitbok is, there are reits (reeds);
where reits, there wasser.'

"I saw his reasoning, and that it was not likely that a reitbok would be
very far from water.

"This hope gave me fresh strength to go on: we followed the slight
traces of this buck, and soon came to a regular beaten track that the
buck had made in going to and returning from water. We soon came to the
vlei: there was n