Having parted with Sechele, we skirted along the Kalahari Desert, and sometimes within its borders, giving the Boers a wide berth. A larger fall of rain than usual had occurred in 1852, and that was the completion of a cycle of eleven or twelve years, at which the same phenomenon is reported to have happened on three occasions. An unusually large crop of melons had appeared in consequence. We had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. J. Macabe returning from Lake Ngami, which he had succeeded in reaching by going right across the Desert from a point a little to the south of Kolobeng. The accounts of the abundance of watermelons were amply confirmed by this energetic traveler; for, having these in vast quantities, his cattle subsisted on the fluid contained in them for a period of no less than twenty-one days; and when at last they reached a supply of water, they did not seem to care much about it. Coming to the lake from the southeast, he crossed the Teoughe, and went round the northern part of it, and is the only European traveler who had actually seen it all. His estimate of the extent of the lake is higher than that given by Mr. Oswell and myself, or from about ninety to one hundred miles in circumference. Before the lake was discovered, Macabe wrote a letter in one of the Cape papers recommending a certain route as likely to lead to it. The Transvaal Boers fined him 500 dollars for writing about "ouze felt", OUR country, and imprisoned him, too, till the fine was paid. I now learned from his own lips that the public report of this is true. Mr. Macabe's companion, Mahar, was mistaken by a tribe of Barolongs for a Boer, and shot as he approached their village. When Macabe came up and explained that he was an Englishman, they expressed the utmost regret, and helped to bury him. This was the first case in recent times of an Englishman being slain by the Bechuanas. We afterward heard that there had been some fighting between these Barolongs and the Boers, and that there had been capturing of cattle on both sides. If this was true, I can only say that it was the first time that I ever heard of cattle being taken by Bechuanas. This was a Caffre war in stage the second; the third stage in the development is when both sides are equally well armed and afraid of each other; the fourth, when the English take up a quarrel not their own, and the Boers slip out of the fray.