SUPPOSED ANSWER. "I don't know. I want water. I am glad, I am quite pleased. I am thankful to you."
"Take us to the wagons, and you will get plenty of water."
REAL ANSWER (looking vacantly around). "How did I wander? Perhaps the well is there, perhaps not. I don't know. I have wandered."
SUPPOSED ANSWER. "Something about thanks; he says he is pleased, and mentions water again." The guide's vacant stare while trying to remember is thought to indicate mental imbecility, and the repeated thanks were supposed to indicate a wish to deprecate their wrath.
"Well, Livingstone HAS played us a pretty trick, giving us in charge of an idiot. Catch us trusting him again. What can this fellow mean by his thanks and talk about water? Oh, you born fool! take us to the wagons, and you will get both meat and water. Wouldn't a thrashing bring him to his senses again?" "No, no, for then he will run away, and we shall be worse off than we are now."
The hunters regained the wagons next day by their own sagacity, which becomes wonderfully quickened by a sojourn in the Desert; and we enjoyed a hearty laugh on the explanation of their midnight colloquies. Frequent mistakes of this kind occur. A man may tell his interpreter to say that he is a member of the family of the chief of the white men; "YES, YOU SPEAK LIKE A CHIEF," is the reply, meaning, as they explain it, that a chief may talk nonsense without any one daring to contradict him. They probably have ascertained, from that same interpreter, that this relative of the white chief is very poor, having scarcely any thing in his wagon.
I sometimes felt annoyed at the low estimation in which some of my hunting friends were held; for, believing that the chase is eminently conducive to the formation of a brave and noble character, and that the contest with wild beasts is well adapted for fostering that coolness in emergencies, and active presence of mind, which we all admire, I was naturally anxious that a higher estimate of my countrymen should be formed in the native mind. "Have these hunters, who come so far and work so hard, no meat at home?"—"Why, these men are rich, and could slaughter oxen every day of their lives."—"And yet they come here, and endure so much thirst for the sake of this dry meat, none of which is equal to beef?"—"Yes, it is for the sake of play besides" (the idea of sport not being in the language). This produces a laugh, as much as to say, "Ah! you know better;" or, "Your friends are fools." When they can get a man to kill large quantities of game for them, whatever HE may think of himself or of his achievements, THEY pride themselves in having adroitly turned to good account the folly of an itinerant butcher.
The water having at last flowed into the wells we had dug in sufficient quantity to allow a good drink to all our cattle, we departed from Serotli in the afternoon; but as the sun, even in winter, which it now was, is always very powerful by day, the 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.