Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/85

 Transvaal on the right bank of the Limpopo. The one I noticed was twenty-five feet in height, its circumference measuring nearly fifty-two feet.

On starting northwards we had first to cross the small outlying salt-pans on the Tsitane, then the river itself, and finally to take a course due north right over the basin. The trees of the dense underwood were all more or less stunted, the bush-land alternating with meadow-land overgrown with rich sweet grass and studded with flowers. Near the pans and adjacent streams the soil was brackish, and the vegetation for the most part of a prickly character. Springbocks and duykerbocks, Zulu hartebeests, and striped gnus frequented the woods, which in some parts revealed clearly the vestiges of lions.

All the next day our journey took us past a series of large depressions in the soil, the middle of most of them being marked by small salt-pans, of which I counted no less than forty-two in the course of the day’s progress. We halted for the night near one of them known as the little Shonni; we also crossed some freshwater pools, at once to be distinguished from salt-pans by the fringe of reeds with which they were surrounded.

We now arrived at the eastern shore of a far larger and deeper lake than the Tsitane, called by the natives Karri-karri; its shores were circled by a number of baobabs, and its geological formation seemed very interesting. Like the Tsitane in shape it was almost an isosceles triangle with its apex far away out of sight in the west. On their western side both these lakes are connected with the north of the Soa salt-pan by means of the Zooga river.