Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone (fun to read .txt) 📕

On approaching the confluence of the Tamunak'le we were informed that the fly called tsetse* abounded on its banks. This was a barrier we never expected to meet; and, as it might have brought our wagons to a complete stand-still in a wilderness, where no supplies for the children could be obtained, we were reluctantly compelled to recross the Zouga.

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From the Bayeiye we learned that a party of Englishmen, who had come to the lake in search of ivory, were all laid low by fever, so we traveled hastily down about sixty miles to render what aid was in our power. We were grieved to find, as we came near, that Mr. Alfred Rider, an enterprising young artist who had come to make sketches of this country and of the lake immediately after its discovery, had died of fever before our arrival; but by the aid of medicines and such comforts as could be made by the only English lady who ever visited the lake, the others happily recovered.

The unfinished drawing of Lake Ngami was made by Mr. Rider just before his death, and has been kindly lent for this work by his bereaved mother.

Sechele used all his powers of eloquence with Lechulatebe to induce him to furnish guides that I might be able to visit Sebituane on ox-back, while Mrs. Livingstone and the children remained at Lake Ngami.

He yielded at last. I had a very superior London-made gun, the gift of Lieutenant Arkwright, on which I placed the greatest value, both on account of the donor and the impossibility of my replacing it.

Lechulatebe fell violently in love with it, and offered whatever number of elephants' tusks I might ask for it.

I too was enamored with Sebituane; and as he promised in addition that he would furnish Mrs. Livingstone with meat all the time of my absence, his arguments made me part with the gun. Though he had no ivory at the time to pay me, I felt the piece would be well spent on those terms, and delivered it to him. All being ready for our departure, I took Mrs. Livingstone about six miles from the town, that she might have a peep at the broad part of the lake. Next morning we had other work to do than part, for our little boy and girl were seized with fever.

On the day following, all our servants were down too with the same complaint.

As nothing is better in these cases than change of place, I was forced to give up the hope of seeing Sebituane that year; so, leaving my gun as part payment for guides next year, we started for the pure air of the Desert.

Some mistake had happened in the arrangement with Mr. Oswell, for we met him on the Zouga on our return, and he devoted the rest of this season to elephant-hunting, at which the natives universally declare he is the greatest adept that ever came into the country.

He hunted without dogs. It is remarkable that this lordly animal is so completely harassed by the presence of a few yelping curs as to be quite incapable of attending to man. He makes awkward attempts to crush them by falling on his knees; and sometimes places his forehead against a tree ten inches in diameter; glancing on one side of the tree and then on the other, he pushes it down before him, as if he thought thereby to catch his enemies. The only danger the huntsman has to apprehend is the dogs running toward him, and thereby leading the elephant to their master.

Mr. Oswell has been known to kill four large old male elephants a day.

The value of the ivory in these cases would be one hundred guineas.

We had reason to be proud of his success, for the inhabitants conceived from it a very high idea of English courage; and when they wished to flatter me would say, "If you were not a missionary you would just be like Oswell; you would not hunt with dogs either."

When, in 1852, we came to the Cape, my black coat eleven years out of fashion, and without a penny of salary to draw, we found that Mr. Oswell had most generously ordered an outfit for the half-naked children, which cost about 200 Pounds, and presented it to us, saying he thought Mrs. Livingstone had a right to the game of her own preserves.

Foiled in this second attempt to reach Sebituane, we returned again to Kolobeng, whither we were soon followed by a number of messengers from that chief himself. When he heard of our attempts to visit him, he dispatched three detachments of his men with thirteen brown cows to Lechulatebe, thirteen white cows to Sekomi, and thirteen black cows to Sechele, with a request to each to assist the white men to reach him.

Their policy, however, was to keep him out of view, and act as his agents in purchasing with his ivory the goods he wanted. This is thoroughly African; and that continent being without friths and arms of the sea, the tribes in the centre have always been debarred from European intercourse by its universal prevalence among all the people around the coasts.

Before setting out on our third journey to Sebituane, it was necessary to visit Kuruman; and Sechele, eager, for the sake of the commission thereon, to get the ivory of that chief into his own hands, allowed all the messengers to leave before our return. Sekomi, however, was more than usually gracious, and even furnished us with a guide, but no one knew the path beyond Nchokotsa which we intended to follow. When we reached that point, we found that the main spring of the gun of another of his men, who was well acquainted with the Bushmen, through whose country we should pass, had opportunely broken. I never undertook to mend a gun with greater zest than this; for, under promise of his guidance, we went to the north instead of westward. All the other guides were most liberally rewarded by Mr. Oswell.

We passed quickly over a hard country, which is perfectly flat. A little soil lying on calcareous tufa, over a tract of several hundreds of miles, supports a vegetation of fine sweet short grass, and mopane and baobab trees.

On several parts of this we found large salt-pans, one of which, Ntwetwe, is fifteen miles broad and one hundred long.

The latitude might have been taken on its horizon as well as upon the sea.

Although these curious spots seem perfectly level, all those in this direction have a gentle slope to the northeast: thither the rain-water, which sometimes covers them, gently gravitates. This, it may be recollected, is the direction of the Zouga. The salt dissolved in the water has by this means all been transferred to one pan in that direction, named Chuantsa; on it we see a cake of salt and lime an inch and a half thick.

All the others have an efflorescence of lime and one of the nitrates only, and some are covered thickly with shells. These shells are identical with those of the mollusca of Lake Ngami and the Zouga.

There are three varieties, spiral, univalve, and bivalve.

In every salt-pan in the country there is a spring of water on one side.

I can remember no exception to this rule. The water of these springs is brackish, and contains the nitrate of soda. In one instance there are two springs, and one more saltish than the other.

If this supply came from beds of rock salt the water would not be drinkable, as it generally is, and in some instances, where the salt contained in the pan in which these springs appear has been removed by human agency, no fresh deposit occurs. It is therefore probable that these deposits of salt are the remains of the very slightly brackish lakes of antiquity, large portions of which must have been dried out in the general desiccation.

We see an instance in Lake Ngami, which, when low, becomes brackish, and this view seems supported by the fact that the largest quantities of salt have been found in the deepest hollows or lowest valleys, which have no outlet or outgoing gorge; and a fountain, about thirty miles south of the Bamangwato -- the temperature of which is upward of 100 Deg. -- while strongly impregnated with pure salt, being on a flat part of the country, is accompanied by no deposit.

When these deposits occur in a flat tufaceous country like the present, a large space is devoid of vegetation, on account of the nitrates dissolving the tufa, and keeping it in a state unfavorable to the growth of plants.

We found a great number of wells in this tufa. A place called Matlomagan-yana, or the "Links", is quite a chain of these never-failing springs. As they occasionally become full in seasons when no rain falls, and resemble somewhat in this respect the rivers we have already mentioned, it is probable they receive some water by percolation from the river system in the country beyond. Among these links we found many families of Bushmen; and, unlike those on the plains of the Kalahari, who are generally of short stature and light yellow color, these were tall, strapping fellows, of dark complexion. Heat alone does not produce blackness of skin, but heat with moisture seems to insure the deepest hue.

One of these Bushmen, named Shobo, consented to be our guide over the waste between these springs and the country of Sebituane.

Shobo gave us no hope of water in less than a month. Providentially, however, we came sooner than we expected to some supplies of rain-water in a chain of pools. It is impossible to convey an idea of the dreary scene on which we entered after leaving this spot: the only vegetation was a low scrub in deep sand; not a bird or insect enlivened the landscape.

It was, without exception, the most uninviting prospect I ever beheld; and, to make matters worse, our guide Shobo wandered on the second day.

We coaxed him on at night, but he went to all points of the compass on the trails of elephants which had been here in the rainy season, and then would sit down in the path, and in his broken Sichuana say, "No water, all country only; Shobo sleeps; he breaks down; country only;"

and then coolly curl himself up and go to sleep. The oxen were terribly fatigued and thirsty; and on the morning of the fourth day, Shobo, after professing ignorance of every thing, vanished altogether.

We went on in the direction in which we last saw him, and about eleven o'clock began to see birds; then the trail of a rhinoceros.

At this we unyoked the oxen, and they, apparently knowing the sign, rushed along to find the water in the River Mahabe, which comes from the Tamunak'le, and lay to the west of us. The supply of water in the wagons had been wasted by one of our servants, and by the afternoon only a small portion remained for the children. This was a bitterly anxious night; and next morning the less there was of water, the more thirsty the little rogues became. The idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. It would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe; but