Six native oxen, long-legged, high-shouldered, and with great horns, were attached to each waggon with harness of buffalo hide. Thus the primitive vehicles moved slowly though surely on their massive wheels, ready alike for heights or valleys. For the travellers to ride there were provided small black or grey Spanish horses, good-tempered, brave animals, imported from South America, and much esteemed at the Cape. Among the troops of quadrupeds were also half-a-dozen tame quaggas, a kind of ass with plump bodies and slender legs, who make a noise like the barking of a dog. They were to be used in the smaller expeditions necessary to the geodetic operations, and were adapted to carry the instruments where the waggons could not venture. The only exception to the others was the bushman, who rode a splendid zebra with remarkable grace and dexterity. This animal (the beauty of whose coat with its brown stripes especially excited the admiration of the connoisseur Sir John Murray) was naturally defiant and suspicious, and would not have borne any other rider than Mokoum, who had broken it in for his own use. Some dogs of a half-savage breed, sometimes wrongly called "hyena-hunters," ran by the side of the waggons, their shape and long ears reminding one of the European brach-hound. Such was the caravan which was about to bury itself in the deserts. The oxen advanced calmly under the guidance of their drivers, ever and again pricking them in the flank with their "jambox;" and it was strange to see the troop winding along the hills in marching order. After leaving Lattakoo, whither was the expedition going? Colonel Everest had said, "Straight on;" and indeed he and Matthew Strux could not yet follow a fixed course. What they wanted, before commencing their trigonometrical operations, was a vast level plain, on which to establish the base of the first of the triangles, which, like a network, were to cover for several degrees the southern part of Africa. The Colonel explained to the bushman what he wanted, and with the calmness of one to whom scientific language is familiar, talked to him of triangles, adjacent angles, bases, meridians, zenith distances, and the like. Mokoum let him go on for a few moments, then interrupted him with an impatient movement, saying, "Colonel, I don't know any thing about your angles, bases, and meridians. I don't understand even in the least what you are going to do in the desert: but that is your business. You are asking for a large level plain; oh well, I can find you that."