All this was delightful, and we off-packed our lean oxen in the highest spirits about a quarter of a mile from the water, in the midst of a thick grove of trees. Amiral encamped near us; we made a kraal and settled down for at least a week’s pleasuring. As soon as the elephant was disposed of, I collected all the chief Bushmen in a ring, and gave them tobacco and so forth, and began asking them about the country further on ahead. One of my men came to say that he had just found a Bushman cooking with a large iron pot; this was a sure sign of the neighbourhood of civilised man. The Bushman said that it was given to them by people from a waggon some distance to the east, and who had gone to the lake during the previous rainy season. The man who had guided the Kubabees Hottentots lived here—Toes-u-wap was his melodious name. He and the other Bushman wore great numbers of elephant hair necklaces, with three or four beads strung on each of them; they are, as I now find, worked after the manner that the English ladies call “tatting.” Old Buffaloe’s son and Toes-u-wap were the only two who could understand much of the language of the Hottentots; they interpreted for us to the other Bushmen as well as they could, but our conversation was far from fluent. Several of these Bushmen knew the Mationa language, and as I had a little MS. Sichuana dictionary with me, I asked the Sichuana names for sixty words; of these about twenty were identical with those in my dictionary, twenty were somewhat like them, and the other twenty I could not find. I presume, therefore, that their language is Sichuana, or a dialect of it. The Bushmen were unanimous in saying that our next stage to the east was longer than the one we had just travelled. The season was so excessively dry that all the wells were exhausted. The Kubabees Hottentots had passed by this place in the dry season, but it was subsequent to an ordinarily rainy summer, and they left ’Tounobis in the afternoon, travelled all night, and next midday drank water with reeds, after their manner, from a place where the sand was damp; on the ensuing day they came to a Bushman werft, and so on every day till the fifth, when they reached a Mationa cattle-post; they call it Eisis in Hottentot, Chuèsa in Mationa language; from there the hills that border the great water (river or lake I am not sure which) can be seen. There is said to be much game there. We had great difficulty in making the Bushmen distinguish between the lake and the rivers; they called the whole water-country by one name—Tl’ Annee. However, I will not enter at length into these details, as more accurate information will certainly be received before long from the whites, or whiter races, who are now steadily pushing northwards.