This produces a laugh, as much as to say, "Ah! you know better;" or, "Your friends are fools." When they can get a man to kill large quantities of game for them, whatever HE may think of himself or of his achievements, THEY pride themselves in having adroitly turned to good account the folly of an itinerant butcher.
The water having at last flowed into the wells we had dug in sufficient quantity to allow a good drink to all our cattle, we departed from Serotli in the afternoon; but as the sun, even in winter, which it now was, is always very powerful by day, the wagons were dragged but slowly through the deep, heavy sand, and we advanced only six miles before sunset.

We could only travel in the mornings and evenings, as a single day in the hot sun and heavy sand would have knocked up the oxen.

Next day we passed Pepacheu (white tufa), a hollow lined with tufa, in which water sometimes stands, but it was now dry; and at night our trocheamer* showed that we had made but twenty-five miles from Serotli.
* This is an instrument which, when fastened on the wagon-wheel, records the number of revolutions made.

By multiplying this number by the circumference of the wheel, the actual distance traveled over is at once ascertained.
Ramotobi was angry at the slowness of our progress, and told us that, as the next water was three days in front, if we traveled so slowly we should never get there at all.

The utmost endeavors of the servants, cracking their whips, screaming and beating, got only nineteen miles out of the poor beasts.