In the evening of our second day at Serotli, a hyaena, appearing suddenly among the grass, succeeded in raising a panic among our cattle.  This false mode of attack is the plan which this cowardly animal always adopts.  His courage resembles closely that of a turkey-cock.  He will bite, if an animal is running away; but if the animal stand still, so does he.  Seventeen of our draught oxen ran away, and in their flight went right into the hands of Sekomi, whom, from his being unfriendly to our success, we had no particular wish to see.  Cattle-stealing, such as in the circumstances might have occurred in Caffraria, is here unknown; so Sekomi sent back our oxen, and a message strongly dissuading us against attempting the Desert.  “Where are you going?  You will be killed by the sun and thirst, and then all the white men will blame me for not saving you.”  This was backed by a private message from his mother.  “Why do you pass me?  I always made the people collect to hear the word that you have got.  What guilt have I, that you pass without looking at me?” We replied by assuring the messengers that the white men would attribute our deaths to our own stupidity and “hard-headedness” (tlogo, e thata), “as we did not intend to allow our companions and guides to return till they had put us into our graves.”  We sent a handsome present to Sekomi, and a promise that, if he allowed the Bakalahari to keep the wells open for us, we would repeat the gift on our return.

After exhausting all his eloquence in fruitless attempts to persuade us to return, the under-chief, who headed the party of Sekomi’s messengers, inquired, “Who is taking them?” Looking round, he exclaimed, with a face expressive of the most unfeigned disgust, “It is Ramotobi!” Our guide belonged to Sekomi’s tribe, but had fled to Sechele; as fugitives in this country are always well received, and may even afterward visit the tribe from which they had escaped, Ramotobi was in no danger, though doing that which he knew to be directly opposed to the interests of his own chief and tribe.

All around Serotli the country is perfectly flat, and composed of soft white sand.  There is a peculiar glare of bright sunlight from a cloudless sky over the whole scene; and one clump of trees and bushes, with open spaces between, looks so exactly like another, that if you leave the wells, and walk a quarter of a mile in any direction, it is difficult to return.  Oswell and Murray went out on one occasion to get an eland, and were accompanied by one of the Bakalahari.  The perfect sameness of the country caused even this son of the Desert to lose his way; a most puzzling conversation forthwith ensued between them and their guide.  One of the most common phrases of the people is “Kia itumela”, I thank you, or I am pleased; and the gentlemen were both quite familiar with it, and with the word “metse”, water.  But there is a word very similar in sound, “Kia timela”, I am wandering; its perfect is “Ki timetse”, I have wandered.  The party had been roaming about, perfectly lost, till the sun went down; and, through their mistaking the verb “wander” for “to be pleased”, and “water”, the colloquy went on at intervals during the whole bitterly cold night in somewhat the following style: