shower provided us with the drinking-water which the soil failed to supply. We saw some ostriches, duykerbocks, and striped genus on the plain, and, in the distance, some lions on the look-out for zebras. Coming to a wood that seemed a suitable resting-place, I determined to spend the night there.
Before the following evening we arrived at a great forest, stretching nearly 100 miles to the north, and forming a part of the sandy-pool plateau. With the exception of a few glades containing water, the soil is entirely of sand, and is the western portion of the district to which Mohr has given the name of “the land of a thousand pools.” I only apply the term to the region without any appreciable slope, where the rain can have no downfall to the rivers. The pools are almost all fed solely by the rain, and are generally small and overgrown with grass; they retain their supply of water very differently, sometimes for eight months in the year, sometimes only for two. A comparatively small number are fed by springs, and such of them as are perennial have special names given to them by the Madenassanas who live in the underwood; whilst others, full only a part of the year, have been named on various occasions by Dutch or English hunters and ivory-traders. The boundaries of this pool plateau are the Nata and Soa salt-lake on the south, the Zambesi on the north, the Mababi veldt on the west, and the Nata and Uguay rivers on the east. It is the district of Central South Africa where the larger mammalia, such as elephants, rhinoceroses, and giraffes begin to be more abundant; thence extending eastwards and westwards, as well as northwards beyond the Zambesi. In the winter, owing to the
