We therefore filled our bottles, gave the oxen the rest of the liquid mud, and trekked due west, having first sent a “boy” to the main camp to warn the water-waggon to take back our belongings there. Before leaving, van Reenen made up his mind to shoot the big puff that lay in the deepest shaft beside the little pool of water which we had not touched--for we feared that some day a passer-by might see the water and not the snake, and scramble down to his death. So van Reenen lay peering down the shaft for an hour, till at last the big brute glided out of his hole to the water, and a bullet cut him nearly in two. “He’s finished, anyway,” said my pal, and so he was; but that puff-adder was yet to revenge himself on me in a very decided manner. We trekked all day through a magnificent grass country, the dunes being almost waist-high in it, and I could understand the bitter complaints of some of the border farmers that the gemsbok are given the best part of the country. We reached a well in the Molopo the following morning, and at a border farm near we obtained horses, and rode up to Witdraai, the nearest police post on the Kuruman River, to get information as to the prospects of t’samma, etc., eastward of that place. CHAPTER XVII THE KURUMAN RIVER--WITDRAAI--AAR PAN AND EASTWARD--GEMSBOK AND T’SAMMA--DRIELING PAN--WILD DOGS--THIRSTY CAMELS--SEARCH FOR WOLVERDANSE--“NABA”!--BUSHMEN--END OF THE TRIP. The old bed of the Molopo River, which farther south has been long since denuded of timber, is, in the vicinity of its junction with the Kuruman, both well wooded and interesting. Long, park-like stretches of grass with fine trees of a variety of _cameel-doorn_, having huge, bean-like pods, delighted the eye tired of sand and the monotony of the treeless dunes we had just left, and when we eventually turned into the Kuruman River the vegetation became even _more_ luxuriant. Not only the dry and sand-choked bed of this once important river, but for miles on either side of it, was a vast field of luxuriant grass almost waist-high, and as thick as a corn-field; indeed, this portion of the Kalahari, and for a long distance into the Reserve towards Kuruman, would form an ideal ranching country. In the fine trees were birds in great variety, hornbills with huge grotesque beaks, and a most lovely blue jay with a plumage of the most brilliant Oxford and Cambridge blues, small scarlet finches, and a number of others less conspicuous.