Travelling south through the desert countries lying between the Mababi river and Khama's old town of Shoshong, during the month of December 1879, we had found water plentiful as far as the Botletlie. Farther south, however, but little rain appeared to have fallen, and it was not without difficulty that we crossed the desert stretch between that river and the wells of Tlakani.
Our party was a large one, as we were travelling in company with a number of Khama's people who had been hunting in the Mababi country during the past season, and with whom we were on very good terms. These people were under the command of Tinkarn, one of Khama's most trusted chiefs, a man who had been a hunter from his youth upwards, and who from the life he had led had always been closely associated with the wild Bushmen of the desert, whose language he spoke fluently, and over whom he exercised a strong influence.
Tinkarn and his people had five waggons with them and we white men four, two of which belonged to me, one to Mr. H. C. Collison, and one to a mutual friend, who had lost himself and died of thirst, poor fellow, some few months previously in the dreary wastes which lie between the Chobi and the Zambesi rivers.
I had with me two young Cape colonists, Messrs. Miller and Sell, so that we were four white men together. Having full spans of sixteen oxen for each waggon, as well as some spare animals, we had some 150 bullocks with us altogether, as well as eight or ten shooting horses.
South of Tlakani there was no permanent water nearer than the wells of Klabala; the deep pit of Inkowani having ceased to hold water since the emigrant Boers had deepened it during their memorable but disastrous journey through these same deserts in the winter of 1878.
In this country of railways, the distance between Tlakani and Klabala—not much over one hundred miles probably—may seem very small, but as the track between the two places lies through a level expanse of soft desert sand through which a heavy South African bullock waggon can only be dragged at an average rate of from a mile and a half to two miles an hour, it meant four days and four nights at least of constant travel to get through it. Tinkarn, however, had learned from the Bushmen that good rains had fallen not long before between Inkowani and Klabala, and felt sure that our live stock would get a drink at the pools of Mahakabi, in which we had found a good supply of water in the previous April
As it would be a terrible pull to get our waggons through even as far as these pools, we gave our cattle a three days' rest at Tlakani, where the wells were luckily full, before starting southwards again.
I must here say that in the winter season, when the nights are long and cold, and the sun not intensely hot during the daytime, a picked span of bullocks in good hard condition will sometimes manage to pull a waggon along for four days and four nights without drinking, but in very hot weather no bullocks that I have ever seen can work for more than half this time pulling heavy waggons in deep sand and without water.