After breakfast, some of the men, who had gone forward on a little path with some footprints of water-loving animals upon it, returned with the joyful tidings of “metse”, water, exhibiting the mud on their knees in confirmation of the news being true.  It does one’s heart good to see the thirsty oxen rush into a pool of delicious rain-water, as this was.  In they dash until the water is deep enough to be nearly level with their throat, and then they stand drawing slowly in the long, refreshing mouthfuls, until their formerly collapsed sides distend as if they would burst.  So much do they imbibe, that a sudden jerk, when they come out on the bank, makes some of the water run out again from their mouths; but, as they have been days without food too, they very soon commence to graze, and of grass there is always abundance every where.  This pool was called Mathuluani; and thankful we were to have obtained so welcome a supply of water.

After giving the cattle a rest at this spot, we proceeded down the dry bed of the River Mokoko.  The name refers to the water-bearing stratum before alluded to; and in this ancient bed it bears enough of water to admit of permanent wells in several parts of it.  We had now the assurance from Ramotobi that we should suffer no more from thirst.  Twice we found rain-water in the Mokoko before we reached Mokokonyani, where the water, generally below ground elsewhere, comes to the surface in a bed of tufa.  The adjacent country is all covered with low, thorny scrub, with grass, and here and there clumps of the “wait-a-bit thorn”, or ‘Acacia detinens’.  At Lotlakani (a little reed), another spring three miles farther down, we met with the first Palmyra trees which we had seen in South Africa; they were twenty-six in number.

The ancient Mokoko must have been joined by other rivers below this, for it becomes very broad, and spreads out into a large lake, of which the lake we were now in search of formed but a very small part.  We observed that, wherever an ant-eater had made his hole, shells were thrown out with the earth, identical with those now alive in the lake.

When we left the Mokoko, Ramotobi seemed, for the first time, to be at a loss as to which direction to take.  He had passed only once away to the west of the Mokoko, the scenes of his boyhood.  Mr. Oswell, while riding in front of the wagons, happened to spy a Bushwoman running away in a bent position, in order to escape observation.  Thinking it to be a lion, he galloped up to her.  She thought herself captured, and began to deliver up her poor little property, consisting of a few traps made of cords; but, when I explained that we only wanted water, and would pay her if she led us to it, she consented to conduct us to a spring.  It was then late in the afternoon, but she walked briskly before our horses for eight miles, and showed us the water of Nchokotsa.  After leading us to the water, she wished to go away home, if indeed she had any—­she had fled