The End.
Story 4--Chapter I.
STORY IV—THE IVORY TRADER; A TALE OF AFRICA.
To the north of the Cape of Good Hope Colony, beyond the Great Orange River, an extensive level region exists, known as the Kalahara Desert. Here no running streams are found to fertilise the plain, and often for miles and miles together, not a well nor pool is to be discovered, from which the weary traveller can quench his burning thirst. Yet destitute as it is of water, it is in many parts covered with grass, and an immense variety of creeping plants; while in some places large patches of bushes, and even trees, find nourishment in the seeming arid soil, and countless multitudes of wild animals, especially those which require but little water, or can go many days together without drinking, roam over its trackless wilds.
This region passed, a fertile country is found, thickly populated by dark-skinned tribes, who till of late years have had no intercourse with white men. Here an almost countless number of rivers and streams are found, some flowing into the mighty Zambesi, and others into Lake Ngami.
Notwithstanding the dangers which must be encountered in crossing the vast Kalahara Desert, from the scarcity of water, the intense heat, the wild beasts, the savage people who inhabit its borders, and more than all, from the attacks of the Tsetse fly, whose poisonous bite speedily destroys cattle and horses, white traders from the colony occasionally traverse it, for the purpose of obtaining ivory from the natives.
A tilted waggon belonging to one of these traders, dragged by a span of fourteen oxen, was slowly moving across the wide-extending plain. On the box sat a Hottentot driver, his whip in hand, with lash of prodigious length, reaching even to the leading animals shouting out at the same time strange sounds to urge them on. A dozen dark-skinned men, some clad in jacket and trousers, and broad-brimmed hats, but others having merely a cloth or kilt round their loins, moved along by the side of the waggon. A few were seated on oxen, and the rest marched on foot, mostly with arms in their hands. Among those on foot was a young lad, whose dark skin showed that he was an African, though his features had somewhat of the Asiatic character. He was dressed more in the English fashion than the other black men, though his firm step and independent air proved that young Kibo was well accustomed to traverse the desert wilds. Ahead of the caravan stalked, with spear in hand, the Bechuana guide Masiko, whose people inhabit the region to the south of the desert, over all parts of which, from his earliest youth, he had wandered. His only garment was a cotton scarf, or plaid of a dark colour, thrown over his shoulders and wound round his waist, so as to form a kilt reaching to his knees, his woolly head and his feet being without covering. Two horses without saddles followed the waggon, secured to it by thongs of hide, and several spare oxen kept pace with the vehicle, ready to supply the places of any of the team which might knock up on the road.
Two white persons mounted on strong horses brought up the rear of the caravan. One Mr Robert Vincent, the owner of the waggon and its varied contents, was a strongly-built man of middle age, his countenance well tanned by African suns; the other a lad of about fifteen years of age apparently, who, from his slightly-built figure, looked scarcely capable of enduring the fatigues, of the journey before him.