By the time we reached the water-pools to which we were being conducted, I was considerably better. The place, at which it was my intention to halt for a day or two, was strewn with zebras’ hoofs clustered over with little excrescences formed by wasps’ larvæ, with fragments of koodoo and blessbocks’ horns, with the skulls of striped gnus, of a giraffe, and of a rhinoceros, so that there could exist little doubt but that comparatively recently it had been the site of a hunter’s quarters. This impression was confirmed by the Masarwa guide, who told us that a party of Bakuenas, with one of Sechele’s sons at their head, had not long since carried back with them to Molopolole a great waggon-load of skins and meat, besides a number of ostriches.
Having refreshed ourselves, we agreed that we were bound duly to celebrate our New Year’s Day. Our festivities were necessarily of a very simple character, and were brought to a close by drinking the health of the Emperor of Austria in the heart of the South African wilderness. The Masarwa stared at us in great amazement; to him our cheers appeared like speaking to the air, and he inquired of Pit whether we were addressing our morimo.
Towards evening I felt myself so far recovered, that I ventured to take a little stroll into the woods to a spot where the road branched off suddenly from west to north, and where I had observed some trees of a remarkable height. In the different woods between Molopolole and Shoshong, some groves of trees are sixty feet high, and amongst them I saw a species of Acacia horrida, that I think I had not seen elsewhere.
In various places some old trunks of trees had fallen down, and their black bark had become partly embedded in broken boughs, or they had rested in their fall obliquely against the standing trunks of other trees, while the vegetation that sprouted luxuriantly from the mould that formed upon the decaying wood grew up so thick as to make tracts in the forest that were perfectly impenetrable. I heard the cackle of some guinea-fowl at no great distance, but as it was growing dusk, I felt it was unadvisable to proceed farther into the grove.
PREPARING THE NEW YEAR’S FEAST IN THE FOREST.
Having amply remunerated them, I sent our two guides back again, but according to their advice, I had six large fires lighted round our encampment to keep off the beasts of prey that we were assured were very numerous. Then all unconscious that the next day was to be one of the most eventful of my experience, I lay down and was soon asleep.
I did not wake next morning till after my usual hour, and was only aroused by a strange chilly sensation running over my body. It was caused by one of the small snakes that lurked in the skulls that lay around, and that had been attracted towards us by the warmth of our camp-fires.
The sun was already quite high, and I found that some visitors had arrived, amongst whom I recognized the Bakuena who was the principal resident in the village which we had passed through on the previous day. He had brought some pallah-skins, a few white ostrich-feathers of inferior quality, and an elephant’s tusk weighing about nine pounds, that bore manifest signs of having been shed some years, and having lain in the grass long before it was discovered.
About noon I shouldered the double-barrelled gun that I had brought from Moshaneng, took a dozen cartridges, and went off to get some fresh game for our larder. I had not gone many hundred yards before I observed some vestiges of gnus, which I tracked for some distance, until I came across several fresh giraffe foot-marks running in quite a different direction; at once I altered my course and followed them. The herd, I reckoned, must have been at least twenty in number. After keeping along them for nearly two miles, I found the tracks divided, but I adhered to the line of the more numerous, taking, as I imagined, a north-west direction.