CHAP. ix.] START FOR 'TOUNOBIS, 165
the son of the chief whose name means " Buffalo," was much the most intelligible, and I engaged him at once as guide. He told us all about the Kubabees Hottentots, how they came and where they went, whom they killed, and whom they robbed, and gave us every particular. All the Bushmen were well acquainted with the great waters to the northeast (the Lake 'Ngami and its rivers) and described the boats on them, and mimicked the alligators and the hippopotami. They had heard also of the Soon Damup, that tribe of Ghou Damup that live in an independent state along the lower part of the Omoramba, and pointed out the direction of their country. They knew of waggons having gone to Lake 'Ngami, and said that they had some things which were given to them by the people who travelled in them, whom they particularly described. They, however, protested that the country was, in this peculiarly dry season, impassable beyond 'Tounobis.
How far this place was we could not well make out, but it certainly was a long journey without water; tired and footsore as the oxen were, I was determined however to attempt it. The Bushmen declared that the game was all scared away from where we were ; but that we should see immense quantities at 'Tounobis. One informant asserted that the buffaloes were so thick upon the ground that we should have great difficulty in driving the waggons through them. But they all agreed that near 'Tounobis it would be dangerous to travel at night, as the wild animals would certainly charge us and our oxen when we met them on the way.
We started for 'Tounobis on the afternoon of October 1st with Amiral and half of his men ; after about three hours we came to a little well that the Hottentots who were before us had just drank dry, and, going on, to our delight saw two huge white rhinoceroses, three or four hundred yards on one side of us. They are indeed immense creatures, so far longer than the black ones, and their horns so much larger. The rhinoceros now in the Regent's Park Gardens is a black rhinoceros ; it is much the most vicious of the two kinds, but nothing like the size of the other. We all tumbled off our oxen, some twenty of us (the others had returned to Amiral's waggons), and ran helter-skelter through the bushes each his own way, till we were pretty near them, and then, as one trotted up to see what was the matter, a volley was blazed into him, that bowled him over like a hare. The other one took a sweep and escaped unshot. The rapidity with which the slaughtered one was cutup was perfectly astonishing. I minuted the whole occurrence;