The dogs were now suffering greatly, for their paws were cracked and bleeding, and they were half dead with thirst. The few bushes that had afforded them occasional shelter got farther and farther apart as we entered country where apparently rain had never fallen. This was indeed desert, nothing but bare, scorching sand, with the blackened stumps of the dead toa grass, and here and there a shrivelled salt-bush, alone showing that vegetation had ever existed there.
By noon we were in an extremely bad plight, our tongues and lips cracked and parched, and we were each sucking a small pebble to promote salivation. The dogs dug feebly into each tiny patch of shade from the far-apart bushes, and lay panting and whining until we were almost out of sight over the next dune, when, howling with pain from their bleeding and burning feet, they would scuttle along after and past us, frantically looking for a little shade to lessen their torture.
ON THIS GREAT SALT PAN, SOUTHERN KALAHARI.
Dogs dying of thirst.
There seemed little hope of their getting through, and I wished to shoot the unfortunate animals, but Du Toit dissuaded me, saying that there was just a chance that we should find fresh water near the Salt Pan, for he had heard the Hottentots say that in the old days, when they were allowed access to it, they had pits dug in its margin, where they got good fresh water quite near to the salt. He said he hoped also to find traces of the old waggon-road, which would help us get our bearings properly.
Still we could obtain no further glimpse of the pan, for the dunes were all of the same dead level; moreover the mirage was now dancing all round the circumscribed horizon, which ended in every direction in shimmering sheets of water, in which clouds, dunes, and occasionally gemsbok and animals were mirrored to perfection. Our feet were blistered and bleeding, and van Reenen was rapidly getting lame, but we dared not rest; moreover there was no shade, and to sit or lie on the burning sand was worse torture than staggering on.
At length the bare dunes ended abruptly, grass and bushes appeared again, and here and there Du Toit was able to pluck a tiny shoot of young sorrel to chew, which gave us some small relief from what was now torture. Then came a small gar boom tree, its scanty greyish leaves full of long bean-like pods on which buck feed greedily, and capable of giving us a modicum of shade. We threw ourselves down, panting and anxious. Du Toit, however, made for the first prominent dune we had seen for hours, and, climbing it, brought us the welcome news that the Salt Pan was barely a mile away. So we shuffled on again, and at three o’clock stood on its margin. It was truly a wonderful sight—circular in form, a mile or more in diameter, and covered with salt as pure and white as the driven snow. Across it, and adding to its striking resemblance to a snow-clad Canadian lake, lay the spoors of gemsbok and other large animals, the recent ones showing as black as ink, for the salt is but a few inches deep, and underlying it is a thick black mud.
Into this the poor tortured dogs dug their noses—it was cool, but pure brine—and with their tails between their legs and howling dismally they crawled back to the sand and bush.
Meanwhile, in spite of our plight, the wide expanse of clean salt had proved as irresistible to us as a clean stretch of sea sand usually does to schoolboys or “cheap trippers,” and we scraped our initials deep into the black mud, till the lettering stood out as clearly as black type upon white paper. Van Reenen wished to cool his burning feet in the wet brine, but was dissuaded, and, separating, we searched the margin of the pan for a sign of the pits spoken of by the Hottentots. But we found no vestige of them, though on the southern margin we found the old waggon-path, plainly visible owing to its thick covering of toa grass, but useless to us, as it led south-west towards “Aar Pan,” whilst our camp and water lay north-west.