At Sebituane's death the chieftainship devolved, as her father intended,
on a daughter named Ma-mochisane. He had promised to show us his country
and to select a suitable locality for our residence. We had now to look
to the daughter, who was living twelve days to the north, at Naliele.
We were obliged, therefore, to remain until a message came from her;
and when it did, she gave us perfect liberty to visit any part of the
country we chose. Mr. Oswell and I then proceeded one hundred and thirty
miles to the northeast, to Sesheke; and in the end of June, 1851, we
were rewarded by the discovery of the Zambesi, in the centre of the
continent. This was a most important point, for that river was not
previously known to exist there at all. The Portuguese maps all
represent it as rising far to the east of where we now were; and if
ever any thing like a chain of trading stations had existed across
the country between the latitudes 12 Deg. and 18 Deg. south, this
magnificent portion of the river must have been known before. We saw it
at the end of the dry season, at the time when the river is about at its
lowest, and yet there was a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred
yards of deep flowing water. Mr. Oswell said he had never seen such a
fine river, even in India. At the period of its annual inundation it
rises fully twenty feet in perpendicular height, and floods fifteen or
twenty miles of lands adjacent to its banks.

The country over which we had traveled from the Chobe was perfectly
flat, except where there were large ant-hills, or the remains of former
ones, which had left mounds a few feet high. These are generally covered
with wild date-trees and palmyras, and in some parts there are forests
of mimosae and mopane. Occasionally the country between the Chobe and
Zambesi is flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying near the
Chobe or on its banks. The Makololo were living among these swamps for
the sake of the protection the deep reedy rivers afforded them against
their enemies.

Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement for myself,
I could not conscientiously ask them to abandon their defenses for my
convenience alone. The healthy districts were defenseless, and the safe
localities were so deleterious to human life, that the original Basutos
had nearly all been cut off by the fever; I therefore feared to subject
my family to the scourge.

As we were the very first white men the inhabitants had ever seen, we
were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first who came to see us
was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico.
Many of the Makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red
baize, and also of printed cottons; on inquiry, we learned that these
had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari,
which is situated near Bihe. This tribe began the slave-trade with
Sebituane only in 1850, and but for the unwillingness of Lechulatebe
to allow us to pass, we should have been with Sebituane in time to have
prevented it from commencing at all. The Mambari visited in ancient
times the chief of the Barotse, whom Sebituane conquered, and he refused
to allow any one to sell a child. They never came back again till 1850;
and as they had a number of old Portuguese guns marked "Legitimo
de Braga", which Sebituane thought would be excellent in any future
invasion of Matebele, he offered to purchase them with cattle or ivory,
but the Mambari refused every thing except boys about fourteen years of
age. The Makololo declare they never heard of people being bought and
sold till then, and disliked it, but the desire to possess the guns
prevailed, and eight old guns were exchanged for as many boys; these
were not their own children, but captives of the black races they had
conquered. I have never known in Africa an instance of a parent selling
his own offspring. The Makololo were afterward incited to make a foray
against some tribes to the eastward; the Mambari bargaining to use their
guns in the attack for the captives they might take, and the Makololo
were to have all the cattle. They went off with at least two hundred
slaves that year. During this foray the Makololo met some Arabs from
Zanzibar, who presented them with three English muskets, and in return
received about thirty of their captives.

In talking with my companions over these matters, the idea was suggested
that, if the slave-market were supplied with articles of European
manufacture by legitimate commerce, the trade in slaves would become
impossible. It seemed more feasible to give the goods, for which the
people now part with their servants, in exchange for ivory and other
products of the country, and thus prevent the trade at the beginning,
than to try to put a stop to it at any of the subsequent steps. This
could only be effected by establishing a highway from the coast into the
centre of the country.

As there was no hope of the Boers allowing the peaceable instruction
of the natives at Kolobeng, I at once resolved to save my family from
exposure to this unhealthy region by sending them to England, and
to return alone, with a view to exploring the country in search of a
healthy district that might prove a centre of civilization, and open up
the interior by a path to either the east or west coast. This resolution
led me down to the Cape in April, 1852, being the first time during
eleven years that I had visited the scenes of civilization. Our route
to Cape Town led us to pass through the centre of the colony during
the twentieth month of a Caffre war; and if those who periodically pay
enormous sums for these inglorious affairs wish to know how our little
unprotected party could quietly travel through the heart of the colony
to the capital with as little sense or sign of danger as if we had been
in England, they must engage a "'Times' Special Correspondent" for
the next outbreak to explain where the money goes, and who have been
benefited by the blood and treasure expended.

Having placed my family on board a homeward-bound ship, and promised
to rejoin them in two years, we parted, for, as it subsequently proved,
nearly five years. The Directors of the London Missionary Society
signified their cordial approval of my project by leaving the matter
entirely to my own discretion; and I have much pleasure in acknowledging
my obligations to the gentlemen composing that body for always acting in
an enlightened spirit, and with as much liberality as their constitution
would allow.

I have the like pleasure in confessing my thankfulness to the Astronomer
Royal at the Cape, Thomas Maclear, Esq., for enabling me to recall
the little astronomical knowledge which constant manual labor and the
engrossing nature of missionary duties had effaced from my memory,
and in adding much that I did not know before. The promise he made on
parting, that he would examine and correct all my observations, had
more effect in making me persevere in overcoming the difficulties of an
unassisted solitary observer than any thing else; so whatever credit may
be attached to the geographical positions laid down in my route must
be attributed to the voluntary aid of the excellent and laborious
astronomer of the Cape observatory.

Having given the reader as rapid a sketch as possible of events which
attracted notice between 1840 and 1852, I now proceed to narrate the
incidents of the last and longest journey of all, performed in 1852-6.

Chapter 5.

Start in June, 1852, on the last and longest Journey from Cape Town--
Companions--Wagon-traveling--Physical Divisions of Africa--The
Eastern, Central, and Western Zones--The Kalahari Desert--Its
Vegetation--Increasing Value of the Interior for Colonization--
Our Route--Dutch Boers--Their Habits--Sterile Appearance of
the District--Failure of Grass--Succeeded by other Plants--
Vines--Animals--The Boers as Farmers--Migration of Springbucks--
Wariness of Animals--The Orange River--Territory of the Griquas and
Bechuanas--The Griquas--The Chief Waterboer--His wise and energetic
Government--His Fidelity--Ill-considered Measures of the Colonial
Government in regard to Supplies of Gunpowder--Success of the
Missionaries among the Griquas and Bechuanas--Manifest Improvement of
the native Character--Dress of the Natives--A full-dress Costume--A
Native's Description of the Natives--Articles of Commerce in the
Country of the Bechuanas--Their Unwillingness to learn, and Readiness
to criticise.

Having sent my family home to England, I started in the beginning of
June, 1852, on my last journey from Cape Town. This journey extended
from the southern extremity of the continent to St. Paul de Loando, the
capital of Angola, on the west coast, and thence across South Central
Africa in an oblique direction to Kilimane (Quilimane) in Eastern
Africa. I proceeded in the usual conveyance of the country, the heavy,
lumbering Cape wagon drawn by ten oxen, and was accompanied by two
Christian Bechuanas from Kuruman--than whom I never saw better servants
any where--by two Bakwain men, and two young girls, who, having come as
nurses with our children to the Cape, were returning to their home at
Kolobeng. Wagon-traveling in Africa has been so often described that
I need say no more than that it is a prolonged system of picnicking,
excellent for the health, and agreeable to those who are not
over-fastidious about trifles, and who delight in being in the open air.

Our route to the north lay near the centre of the cone-shaped mass of
land which constitutes the promontory of the Cape. If we suppose this
cone to be divided into three zones or longitudinal bands, we find each
presenting distinct peculiarities of climate, physical appearance and
population. These are more marked beyond than within the colony. At
some points one district seems to be continued in and to merge into the
other, but the general dissimilarity warrants the division, as an aid to
memory. The eastern zone is often furnished with mountains, well wooded
with evergreen succulent trees, on which neither fire nor droughts can
have the smallest effect ('Strelitzia', 'Zamia horrida', 'Portulacaria
afra', 'Schotia speciosa', 'Euphorbias', and 'Aloes arborescens');
and its seaboard gorges are clad with gigantic timber. It is also
comparatively well watered with streams and flowing rivers. The annual
supply of rain is considerable, and the inhabitants (Caffres or Zulus)
are tall, muscular, and well made; they are shrewd, energetic, and
brave; altogether they merit the character given them by military
authorities, of being "magnificent savages". Their splendid physical
development and form of skull show that, but for the black skin and
woolly hair, they would take rank among the foremost Europeans.

The next division, that which embraces the centre of the continent,
can scarcely be called hilly, for what hills there are are very low.
It consists for the most part of extensive, slightly undulating plains.
There are no lofty mountains, but few springs, and still fewer flowing
streams. Rain is far from abundant, and droughts may be expected every
few years. Without artificial irrigation no European grain can be
raised, and the inhabitants (Bechuanas), though evidently of the same
stock, originally, with those already mentioned, and closely resembling
them in being an agricultural as well as a pastoral people, are a
comparatively timid race, and inferior to the Caffres in physical
development.

The western division is still more level than the middle one, being
rugged only near the coast. It includes the great plain called
the Kalahari Desert, which is remarkable for little water and very
considerable vegetation.

The reason, probably, why so little rain falls on this extensive
plain is that the prevailing winds of most of the interior country
are easterly, with a little southing. The moisture taken up by the
atmosphere from the Indian Ocean is deposited on the eastern hilly
slope; and when the moving mass of air reaches its greatest elevation,
it is then on the verge of the great valley, or, as in the case of
the Kalahari, the great heated inland plains; there, meeting with the
rarefied air of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat gives it
greater capacity for retaining all its remaining humidity, and few
showers can be given to the middle and western lands in consequence of
the increased hygrometric power.

This is the same phenomenon, on a gigantic scale, as that which takes
place on Table Mountain, at the Cape, in what is called the spreading of
the "table-cloth". The southeast wind causes a mass of air, equal to
the diameter of the mountain, suddenly to ascend at least three thousand
feet; the dilatation produced by altitude, with its attendant cold,
causes the immediate formation of a cloud on the summit; the water in
the atmosphere becomes visible; successive masses of gliding-up and
passing-over air cause the continual formation of clouds, but the top of
the vapory mass, or "table-cloth", is level, and seemingly motionless;
on the lee side, however, the thick volumes of vapor curl over and
descend, but when they reach the point below, where greater density and
higher temperature impart enlarged capacity for carrying water, they
entirely disappear.

Now if, instead of a hollow on the lee side of Table Mountain, we had
an elevated heated plain, the clouds which curl over that side, and
disappear as they do at present when a "southeaster" is blowing, might
deposit some moisture on the windward ascent and top; but the heat would
then impart the increased capacity the air now receives at the lower
level in its descent to leeward, and, instead of an extended country
with a flora of the 'Disa grandiflora', 'gladiolus', 'rushes', and
'lichens', which now appear on Table Mountain, we should have only the
hardy vegetation of the Kalahari.

Why there should be so much vegetation on the Kalahari may be explained
by the geological formation of the country. There is a rim or fringe of
ancient rocks round a great central valley, which, dipping inward, form
a basin, the bottom of which is composed of the oldest silurian rocks.
This basin has been burst through and filled up in many parts by
eruptive traps and breccias, which often bear in their substances
angular fragments of the more ancient rocks, as shown in the fossils
they contain. Now, though large areas have been so dislocated that but
little trace of the original valley formation appears, it is highly
probable that the basin shape prevails over large tracts of the country;
and as the strata on the slopes, where most of the rain falls, dip in
toward the centre, they probably guide water beneath the plains but
ill supplied with moisture from the clouds. The phenomenon of stagnant
fountains becoming by a new and deeper outlet never-failing streams may
be confirmatory of the view that water is conveyed from the sides of the
country into the bottom of the central valley; and it is not beyond
the bounds of possibility that the wonderful river system in the north,
which, if native information be correct, causes a considerable increase
of water in the springs called Matlomagan-yana (the Links), extends its
fertilizing influence beneath the plains of the Kalahari.

The peculiar formation of the country may explain why there is such
a difference in the vegetation between the 20th and 30th parallels of
latitude in South Africa and the same latitudes in Central Australia.
The want of vegetation is as true of some parts too in the centre of
South America as of Australia; and the cause of the difference holds out
a probability for the success of artesian wells in extensive tracts of
Africa now unpeopled solely on account of the want of surface water.
We may be allowed to speculate a little at least on the fact of much
greater vegetation, which, from whatever source it comes, presents for
South Africa prospects of future greatness which we can not hope for
in Central Australia. As the interior districts of the Cape Colony
are daily becoming of higher value, offering to honest industry a fair
remuneration for capital, and having a climate unequaled in salubrity
for consumptive patients, I should unhesitatingly recommend any farmer
at all afraid of that complaint in his family to try this colony. With
the means of education already possessed, and the onward and upward
movement of the Cape population, he need entertain no apprehensions of
his family sinking into barbarism.

The route we at this time followed ran along the middle, or skirted the
western zone before alluded to, until we reached the latitude of Lake
Ngami, where a totally different country begins. While in the colony,
we passed through districts inhabited by the descendants of Dutch and
French refugees who had fled from religious persecution. Those living
near the capital differ but little from the middle classes in
English counties, and are distinguished by public spirit and general
intelligence; while those situated far from the centres of civilization
are less informed, but are a body of frugal, industrious, and hospitable
peasantry. A most efficient system of public instruction was established
in the time of Governor Sir George Napier, on a plan drawn up in a great
measure by that accomplished philosopher, Sir John Herschel. The system
had to contend with less sectarian rancor than elsewhere; indeed, until
quite recently, that spirit, except in a mild form, was unknown.

The population here described ought not to be confounded with some
Boers who fled from British rule on account of the emancipation of their
Hottentot slaves, and perhaps never would have been so had not every now
and then some Rip Van Winkle started forth at the Cape to justify in the
public prints the deeds of blood and slave-hunting in the far interior.
It is therefore not to be wondered at if the whole race is confounded
and held in low estimation by those who do not know the real composition
of the Cape community.

Population among the Boers increases rapidly; they marry soon, are
seldom sterile, and continue to have children late. I once met a worthy
matron whose husband thought it right to imitate the conduct of Abraham
while Sarah was barren; she evidently agreed in the propriety of the
measure, for she was pleased to hear the children by a mother of what
has been thought an inferior race address her as their mother. Orphans
are never allowed to remain long destitute; and instances are frequent
in which a tender-hearted farmer has adopted a fatherless child, and
when it came of age portioned it as his own.

Two centuries of the South African climate have not had much effect upon
the physical condition of the Boers. They are a shade darker, or
rather ruddier, than Europeans, and are never cadaverous-looking, as
descendants of Europeans are said to be elsewhere. There is a tendency
to the development of steatopyga, so characteristic of Arabs and other
African tribes; and it is probable that the interior Boers in another
century will become in color what the learned imagine our progenitors,
Adam and Eve, to have been.

The parts of the colony through which we passed were of sterile aspect;
and, as the present winter had been preceded by a severe drought,
many farmers had lost two thirds of their stock. The landscape was
uninviting; the hills, destitute of trees, were of a dark brown color,
and the scanty vegetation on the plains made me feel that they deserved
the name of Desert more than the Kalahari. When first taken possession
of, these parts are said to have been covered with a coating of grass,
but that has disappeared with the antelopes which fed upon it, and
a crop of mesembryanthemums and crassulas occupies its place. It is
curious to observe how, in nature, organizations the most dissimilar
are mutually dependent on each other for their perpetuation. Here the
original grasses were dependent for dissemination on the grass-feeding
animals, which scattered the seeds. When, by the death of the antelopes,
no fresh sowing was made, the African droughts proved too much for
this form of vegetation. But even this contingency was foreseen by
the Omniscient One; for, as we may now observe in the Kalahari Desert,
another family of plants, the mesembryanthemums, stood ready to
neutralize the aridity which must otherwise have followed. This family
of plants possesses seed-vessels which remain firmly shut on their
contents while the soil is hot and dry, and thus preserve the vegetative
power intact during the highest heat of the torrid sun; but when rain
falls, the seed-vessel opens and sheds its contents just when there is
the greatest probability of their vegetating. In other plants heat and
drought cause the seed-vessels to burst and shed their charge.

One of this family is edible ('Mesembryanthemum edule'); another
possesses a tuberous root, which may be eaten raw; and all are furnished
with thick, fleshy leaves, having pores capable of imbibing and
retaining moisture from a very dry atmosphere and soil, so that, if
a leaf is broken during a period of the greatest drought, it shows
abundant circulating sap. The plants of this family are found much
farther north, but the great abundance of the grasses prevents them from
making any show. There, however, they stand ready to fill up any gap
which may occur in the present prevailing vegetation; and should the
grasses disappear, animal life would not necessarily be destroyed,
because a reserve supply, equivalent to a fresh act of creative power,
has been provided.

One of this family, 'M. turbiniforme', is so colored as to blend in well
with the hue of the soil and stones around it; and a 'gryllus' of the
same color feeds on it. In the case of the insect, the peculiar color
is given as compensation for the deficiency of the powers of motion to
enable it to elude the notice of birds. The continuation of the species
is here the end in view. In the case of the plant the same device is
adopted for a sort of double end, viz., perpetuation of the plant by
hiding it from animals, with the view that ultimately its extensive
appearance will sustain that race.

As this new vegetation is better adapted for sheep and goats in a dry
country than grass, the Boers supplant the latter by imitating the
process by which graminivorous antelopes have so abundantly disseminated
the seed of grasses. A few wagon-loads of mesembryanthemum plants, in
seed, are brought to a farm covered with a scanty crop of coarse grass,
and placed on a spot to which the sheep have access in the evenings. As
they eat a little every night, the seeds are dropped over the grazing
grounds in this simple way, with a regularity which could not be matched
except at the cost of an immense amount of labor. The place becomes in
the course of a few years a sheep-farm, as these animals thrive on such
herbage. As already mentioned, some plants of this family are furnished
with an additional contrivance for withstanding droughts, viz.,
oblong tubers, which, buried deep enough beneath the soil for complete
protection from the scorching sun, serve as reservoirs of sap and
nutriment during those rainless periods which recur perpetually in even
the most favored spots of Africa. I have adverted to this peculiarity
as often seen in the vegetation of the Desert; and, though rather out of
place, it may be well--while noticing a clever imitation of one
process in nature by the Cape farmers--to suggest another for their
consideration. The country beyond south lat. 18 Deg. abounds in three
varieties of grape-bearing vines, and one of these is furnished with
oblong tubers every three or four inches along the horizontal root.
They resemble closely those of the asparagus. This increase of power to
withstand the effects of climate might prove of value in the more arid
parts of the Cape colony, grapes being well known to be an excellent
restorative in the debility produced by heat: by ingrafting, or by some
of those curious manipulations which we read of in books on gardening, a
variety might be secured better adapted to the country than the foreign
vines at present cultivated. The Americans find that some of their
native vines yield wines superior to those made from the very best
imported vines from France and Portugal. What a boon a vine of the sort
contemplated would have been to a Rhenish missionary I met at a part in
the west of the colony called Ebenezer, whose children had never seen
flowers, though old enough to talk about them!

The slow pace at which we wound our way through the colony made almost
any subject interesting. The attention is attracted to the names
of different places, because they indicate the former existence of
buffaloes, elands, and elephants, which are now to be found only
hundreds of miles beyond. A few blesbucks ('Antilope pygarga'), gnus,
bluebucks ('A. cerulea'), steinbucks, and the ostrich ('Struthio
camelus'), continue, like the Bushmen, to maintain a precarious
existence when all the rest are gone. The elephant, the most sagacious,
flees the sound of fire-arms first; the gnu and ostrich, the most wary
and the most stupid, last. The first emigrants found the Hottentots in
possession of prodigious herds of fine cattle, but no horses, asses, or
camels. The original cattle, which may still be seen in some parts of
the frontier, must have been brought south from the north-northeast,
for from this point the natives universally ascribe their original
migration. They brought cattle, sheep, goats, and dogs; why not the
horse, the delight of savage hordes? Horses thrive well in the Cape
Colony when imported. Naturalists point out certain mountain ranges
as limiting the habitat of certain classes of animals; but there is
no Cordillera in Africa to answer that purpose, there being no visible
barrier between the northeastern Arabs and the Hottentot tribes to
prevent the different hordes, as they felt their way southward, from
indulging their taste for the possession of this noble animal.

I am here led to notice an invisible barrier, more insurmountable than
mountain ranges, but which is not opposed to the southern progress of
cattle, goats, and sheep. The tsetse would prove a barrier only until
its well-defined habitat was known, but the disease passing under the
term of horse-sickness (peripneumonia) exists in such virulence over
nearly seven degrees of latitude that no precaution would be sufficient
to save these animals. The horse is so liable to this disease, that only
by great care in stabling can he be kept any where between 20 Deg.
and 27 Deg. S. during the time between December and April. The winter,
beginning in the latter month, is the only period in which Englishmen
can hunt on horseback, and they are in danger of losing all their studs
some months before December. To this disease the horse is especially
exposed, and it is almost always fatal. One attack, however, seems to
secure immunity from a second. Cattle, too, are subject to it, but only
at intervals of a few, sometimes many years; but it never makes a clean
sweep of the whole cattle of a village, as it would do of a troop of
fifty horses. This barrier, then, seems to explain the absence of the
horse among the Hottentots, though it is not opposed to the southern
migration of cattle, sheep, and goats.

When the flesh of animals that have died of this disease is eaten, it
causes a malignant carbuncle, which, when it appears over any important
organ, proves rapidly fatal. It is more especially dangerous over the
pit of the stomach. The effects of the poison have been experienced
by missionaries who had eaten properly cooked food, the flesh of sheep
really but not visibly affected by the disease. The virus in the flesh
of the animal is destroyed neither by boiling nor roasting. This fact,
of which we have had innumerable examples, shows the superiority of
experiments on a large scale to those of acute and able physiologists
and chemists in the laboratory, for a well known physician of Paris,
after careful investigation, considered that the virus in such cases was
completely neutralized by boiling.

This disease attacks wild animals too. During our residence at Chonuan
great numbers of tolos, or koodoos, were attracted to the gardens of the
Bakwains, abandoned at the usual period of harvest because there was no
prospect of the corn ('Holcus sorghum') bearing that year. The koodoo is
remarkably fond of the green stalks of this kind of millet. Free feeding
produced that state of fatness favorable for the development of this
disease, and no fewer than twenty-five died on the hill opposite our
house. Great numbers of gnus and zebras perished from the same cause,
but the mortality produced no sensible diminution in the numbers of the
game, any more than the deaths of many of the Bakwains who persisted,
in spite of every remonstrance, in eating the dead meat, caused any
sensible decrease in the strength of the tribe.

The farms of the Boers consist generally of a small patch of cultivated
land in the midst of some miles of pasturage. They are thus less an
agricultural than a pastoral people. Each farm must have its fountain;
and where no such supply of water exists, the government lands are
unsalable. An acre in England is thus generally more valuable than a
square mile in Africa. But the country is prosperous, and capable of
great improvement. The industry of the Boers augurs well for the future
formation of dams and tanks, and for the greater fruitfulness that would
certainly follow.

As cattle and sheep farmers the colonists are very successful. Larger
and larger quantities of wool are produced annually, and the value of
colonial farms increases year by year. But the system requires that
with the increase of the population there should be an extension of
territory. Wide as the country is, and thinly inhabited, the farmers
feel it to be too limited, and they are gradually spreading to the
north. This movement proves prejudicial to the country behind, for
labor, which would be directed to the improvement of the colony, is
withdrawn and expended in a mode of life little adapted to the exercise
of industrial habits. That, however, does not much concern the rest of
mankind. Nor does it seem much of an evil for men who cultivate the soil
to claim a right to appropriate lands for tillage which other men only
hunt over, provided some compensation for the loss of sustenance be
awarded. The original idea of a title seems to have been that "subduing"
or cultivating gave that right. But this rather Chartist principle must
be received with limitations, for its recognition in England would lead
to the seizure of all our broad ancestral acres by those who are
willing to cultivate them. And, in the case under consideration, the
encroachments lead at once to less land being put under the plow than
is subjected to the native hoe, for it is a fact that the Basutos and
Zulus, or Caffres of Natal, cultivate largely, and undersell our farmers
wherever they have a fair field and no favor.

Before we came to the Orange River we saw the last portion of a
migration of springbucks ('Gazella euchore', or tsepe). They come from
the great Kalahari Desert, and, when first seen after crossing the
colonial boundary, are said often to exceed forty thousand in number. I
can not give an estimate of their numbers, for they appear spread over
a vast expanse of country, and make a quivering motion as they feed, and
move, and toss their graceful horns. They feed chiefly on grass; and as
they come from the north about the time when the grass most abounds,
it can not be want of food that prompts the movement. Nor is it want of
water, for this antelope is one of the most abstemious in that respect.
Their nature prompts them to seek as their favorite haunts level plains
with short grass, where they may be able to watch the approach of an
enemy. The Bakalahari take advantage of this feeling, and burn off large
patches of grass, not only to attract the game by the new crop when it
comes up, but also to form bare spots for the springbuck to range over.

It is not the springbuck alone that manifests this feeling. When oxen
are taken into a country of high grass, they are much more ready to be
startled; their sense of danger is increased by the increased power
of concealment afforded to an enemy by such cover, and they will often
start off in terror at the ill-defined outlines of each other. The
springbuck, possessing this feeling in an intense degree, and being
eminently gregarious, becomes uneasy as the grass of the Kalahari
becomes tall. The vegetation being more sparse in the more arid south,
naturally induces the different herds to turn in that direction. As they
advance and increase in numbers, the pasturage becomes more scarce; it
is still more so the further they go, until they are at last obliged, in
order to obtain the means of subsistence, to cross the Orange River, and
become the pest of the sheep-farmer in a country which contains scarcely
any of their favorite grassy food. If they light on a field of wheat
in their way, an army of locusts could not make a cleaner sweep of the
whole than they will do. It is questionable whether they ever return, as
they have never been seen as a returning body. Many perish from want of
food, the country to which they have migrated being unable to support
them; the rest become scattered over the colony; and in such a
wide country there is no lack of room for all. It is probable that,
notwithstanding the continued destruction by fire-arms, they will
continue long to hold their place.

On crossing the Orange River we come into independent territory
inhabited by Griquas and Bechuanas. By Griquas is meant any mixed race
sprung from natives and Europeans. Those in question were of Dutch
extraction, through association with Hottentot and Bushwomen.
Half-castes of the first generation consider themselves superior to
those of the second, and all possess in some degree the characteristics
of both parents. They were governed for many years by an elected chief,
named Waterboer, who, by treaty, received a small sum per annum from
the colonial government for the support of schools in his country, and
proved a most efficient guard of our northwest boundary. Cattle-stealing
was totally unknown during the whole period of this able chief's
reign; and he actually drove back, single-handed, a formidable force of
marauding Mantatees that threatened to invade the colony.* But for that
brave Christian man, Waterboer, there is every human probability that
the northwest would have given the colonists as much trouble as the
eastern frontier; for large numbers among the original Griquas had
as little scruple about robbing farmers of cattle as the Caffres are
reputed to have. On the election of Waterboer to the chieftainship,
he distinctly declared THAT NO MARAUDING SHOULD BE ALLOWED. As the
government of none of these tribes is despotic, some of his principal
men, in spite of this declaration, plundered some villages of Corannas
living to the south of the Orange River. He immediately seized six of
the ringleaders, and, though the step put his own position in jeopardy,
he summoned his council, tried, condemned, and publicly executed the
whole six. This produced an insurrection, and the insurgents twice
attacked his capital, Griqua Town, with the intention of deposing him;
but he bravely defeated both attempts, and from that day forth, during
his long reign of thirty years, not a single plundering expedition ever
left his territory. Having witnessed the deleterious effects of the
introduction of ardent spirits among his people, he, with characteristic
energy, decreed that any Boer or Griqua bringing brandy into the country
should have his property in ardent spirits confiscated and poured out on
the ground. The Griqua chiefs living farther east were unable to carry
this law into effect as he did, hence the greater facility with which
Boers in that direction got the Griquas to part with their farms.

   * For an account of this, see Moffat's "Scenes and Labors in
   South Africa".

Ten years after he was firmly established in power he entered into a
treaty with the colonial government, and during the twenty years which
followed not a single charge was ever brought against either him or
his people; on the contrary, his faithful adherence to the stipulated
provisions elicited numerous expressions of approbation from successive
governments. A late governor, however, of whom it is impossible to speak
without respect, in a paroxysm of generalship which might have been
good, had it not been totally inappropriate to the case, set about
conciliating a band of rebellious British subjects (Boers), who murdered
the Honorable Captain Murray, by proclaiming their independence while
still in open rebellion, and not only abrogated the treaty with the
Griquas, but engaged to stop the long-accustomed supplies of gunpowder
for the defense of the frontier, and even to prevent them from
purchasing it for their own defense by lawful trade.

If it had been necessary to prevent supplies of ammunition from finding
their way into the country, as it probably was, one might imagine that
the exception should not have been made in favor of either Boers or
Caffres, our openly-avowed enemies; but, nevertheless, the exception was
made, and is still continued in favor of the Boers, while the Bechuanas
and Griquas, our constant friends, are debarred from obtaining a
single ounce for either defense or trade; indeed, such was the state of
ignorance as to the relation of the border tribes with the English, even
at Cape Town, that the magistrates, though willing to aid my researches,
were sorely afraid to allow me to purchase more than ten pounds of
gunpowder, lest the Bechuanas should take it from me by force. As it
turned out, I actually left more than that quantity for upward of two
years in an open box in my wagon at Linyanti.

The lamented Sir George Cathcart, apparently unconscious of what he was
doing, entered into a treaty with the Transvaal Boers, in which articles
were introduced for the free passage of English traders to the north,
and for the entire prohibition of slavery in the free state. Then passed
the "gunpowder ordinance", by which the Bechuanas, whom alone the Boers
dare attempt to enslave, were rendered quite defenseless. The Boers
never attempt to fight with Caffres, nor to settle in Caffreland. We
still continue to observe the treaty. The Boers never did, and
never intended to abide by its provisions; for, immediately on the
proclamation of their independence, a slave-hunt was undertaken against
the Bechuanas of Sechele by four hundred Boers, under Mr. Peit Scholz,
and the plan was adopted which had been cherished in their hearts
ever since the emancipation of the Hottentots. Thus, from unfortunate
ignorance of the country he had to govern, an able and sagacious
governor adopted a policy proper and wise had it been in front of our
enemies, but altogether inappropriate for our friends against whom it
has been applied. Such an error could not have been committed by a man
of local knowledge and experience, such as that noble of colonial birth,
Sir Andries Stockenstrom; and such instances of confounding friend and
foe, in the innocent belief of thereby promoting colonial interests,
will probably lead the Cape community, the chief part of which by no
means feels its interest to lie in the degradation of the native tribes,
to assert the right of choosing their own governors. This, with colonial
representation in the Imperial Parliament, in addition to the local
self-government already so liberally conceded, would undoubtedly secure
the perpetual union of the colony to the English crown.

Many hundreds of both Griquas and Bechuanas have become Christians and
partially civilized through the teaching of English missionaries. My
first impressions of the progress made were that the accounts of the
effects of the Gospel among them had been too highly colored. I expected
a higher degree of Christian simplicity and purity than exists either
among them or among ourselves. I was not anxious for a deeper insight
in detecting shams than others, but I expected character, such as
we imagine the primitive disciples had--and was disappointed.* When,
however, I passed on to the true heathen in the countries beyond the
sphere of missionary influence, and could compare the people there with
the Christian natives, I came to the conclusion that, if the question
were examined in the most rigidly severe or scientific way, the change
effected by the missionary movement would be considered unquestionably
great.

   * The popular notion, however, of the primitive Church is
   perhaps not very accurate.  Those societies especially which
   consisted of converted Gentiles--men who had been accustomed
   to the vices and immoralities of heathenism--were certainly
   any thing but pure.  In spite of their conversion, some of
   them carried the stains and vestiges of their former state
   with them when they passed from the temple to the church.  If
   the instructed and civilized Greek did not all at once rise
   out of his former self, and understand and realize the high
   ideal of his new faith, we should be careful, in judging of
   the work of missionaries among savage tribes, not to apply to
   their converts tests and standards of too great severity. If
   the scoffing Lucian's account of the impostor Peregrinus may
   be believed, we find a church probably planted by the apostles
   manifesting less intelligence even than modern missionary
   churches.  Peregrinus, a notoriously wicked man, was elected
   to the chief place among them, while Romish priests, backed by
   the power of France, could not find a place at all in the
   mission churches of Tahiti and Madagascar.

We can not fairly compare these poor people with ourselves, who have an
atmosphere of Christianity and enlightened public opinion, the growth of
centuries, around us, to influence our deportment; but let any one
from the natural and proper point of view behold the public morality of
Griqua Town, Kuruman, Likatlong, and other villages, and remember what
even London was a century ago, and he must confess that the Christian
mode of treating aborigines is incomparably the best.

The Griquas and Bechuanas were in former times clad much like the
Caffres, if such a word may be used where there is scarcely any clothing
at all. A bunch of leather strings about eighteen inches long hung from
the lady's waist in front, and a prepared skin of a sheep or antelope
covered the shoulders, leaving the breast and abdomen bare: the men wore
a patch of skin, about the size of the crown of one's hat, which barely
served for the purposes of decency, and a mantle exactly like that
of the women. To assist in protecting the pores of the skin from the
influence of the sun by day and of the cold by night, all smeared
themselves with a mixture of fat and ochre; the head was anointed with
pounded blue mica schist mixed with fat; and the fine particles of
shining mica, falling on the body and on strings of beads and brass
rings, were considered as highly ornamental, and fit for the most
fastidious dandy. Now these same people come to church in decent though
poor clothing, and behave with a decorum certainly superior to what
seems to have been the case in the time of Mr. Samuel Pepys in London.
Sunday is well observed, and, even in localities where no missionary
lives, religious meetings are regularly held, and children and adults
taught to read by the more advanced of their own fellow-countrymen; and
no one is allowed to make a profession of faith by baptism unless he
knows how to read, and understands the nature of the Christian religion.

The Bechuana Mission has been so far successful that, when coming from
the interior, we always felt, on reaching Kuruman, that we had returned
to civilized life. But I would not give any one to understand by this
that they are model Christians--we can not claim to be model Christians
ourselves--or even in any degree superior to the members of our country
churches. They are more stingy and greedy than the poor at home; but in
many respects the two are exactly alike. On asking an intelligent chief
what he thought of them, he replied, "You white men have no idea of how
wicked we are; we know each other better than you; some feign belief to
ingratiate themselves with the missionaries; some profess Christianity
because they like the new system, which gives so much more importance to
the poor, and desire that the old system may pass away; and the rest--a
pretty large number--profess because they are really true believers."
This testimony may be considered as very nearly correct.

There is not much prospect of this country ever producing much of the
materials of commerce except wool. At present the chief articles of
trade are karosses or mantles--the skins of which they are composed come
from the Desert; next to them, ivory, the quantity of which can not
now be great, inasmuch as the means of shooting elephants is sedulously
debarred entrance into the country. A few skins and horns, and some
cattle, make up the remainder of the exports. English goods, sugar, tea,
and coffee are the articles received in exchange. All the natives
of these parts soon become remarkably fond of coffee. The acme of
respectability among the Bechuanas is the possession of cattle and
a wagon. It is remarkable that, though these latter require frequent
repairs, none of the Bechuanas have ever learned to mend them. Forges
and tools have been at their service, and teachers willing to aid them,
but, beyond putting together a camp-stool, no effort has ever been made
to acquire a knowledge of the trades. They observe most carefully a
missionary at work until they understand whether a tire is well welded
or not, and then pronounce upon its merits with great emphasis, but
there their ambition rests satisfied. It is the same peculiarity among
ourselves which leads us in other matters, such as book-making, to
attain the excellence of fault-finding without the wit to indite a page.
It was in vain I tried to indoctrinate the Bechuanas with the idea
that criticism did not imply any superiority over the workman, or even
equality with him.

Chapter 6.

Kuruman--Its fine Fountain--Vegetation of the District--Remains
of ancient Forests--Vegetable Poison--The Bible translated by
Mr. Moffat--Capabilities of the Language--Christianity among the
Natives--The Missionaries should extend their Labors more beyond the
Cape Colony--Model Christians--Disgraceful Attack of the Boers on
the Bakwains--Letter from Sechele--Details of the Attack--Numbers of
School-children carried away into Slavery--Destruction of House and
Property at Kolobeng--The Boers vow Vengeance against me--Consequent
Difficulty of getting Servants to accompany me on my Journey--Start in
November, 1852--Meet Sechele on his way to England to obtain Redress
from the Queen--He is unable to proceed beyond the Cape--Meet Mr.
Macabe on his Return from Lake Ngami--The hot Wind of the
Desert--Electric State of the Atmosphere--Flock of Swifts--Reach
Litubaruba--The Cave Lepelole--Superstitions regarding it--Impoverished
State of the Bakwains--Retaliation on the Boers--Slavery--Attachment
of the Bechuanas to Children--Hydrophobia unknown--Diseases of
the Bakwains few in number--Yearly Epidemics--Hasty
Burials--Ophthalmia--Native Doctors--Knowledge of Surgery at a very low
Ebb--Little Attendance given to Women at their Confinements--The "Child
Medicine"--Salubrity of the Climate well adapted for Invalids suffering
from pulmonary Complaints.

The permanence of the station called Kuruman depends entirely on the
fine ever-flowing fountain of that name. It comes from beneath the
trap-rock, of which I shall have to speak when describing the geology of
the entire country; and as it usually issues at a temperature of 72 Deg.
Fahr., it probably comes from the old silurian schists, which formed the
bottom of the great primeval valley of the continent. I could not detect
any diminution in the flow of this gushing fountain during my residence
in the country; but when Mr. Moffat first attempted a settlement here,
thirty-five years ago, he made a dam six or seven miles below the
present one, and led out the stream for irrigation, where not a drop of
the fountain-water ever now flows. Other parts, fourteen miles below the
Kuruman gardens, are pointed out as having contained, within the memory
of people now living, hippopotami, and pools sufficient to drown both
men and cattle. This failure of water must be chiefly ascribed to the
general desiccation of the country, but partly also to the amount of
irrigation carried on along both banks of the stream at the mission
station. This latter circumstance would have more weight were it not
coincident with the failure of fountains over a wide extent of country.

Without at present entering minutely into this feature of the climate,
it may be remarked that the Kuruman district presents evidence of
this dry southern region having, at no very distant date, been as well
watered as the country north of Lake Ngami is now. Ancient river-beds
and water-courses abound, and the very eyes of fountains long since
dried up may be seen, in which the flow of centuries has worn these
orifices from a slit to an oval form, having on their sides the tufa
so abundantly deposited from these primitive waters; and just where the
splashings, made when the stream fell on the rock below, may be supposed
to have reached and evaporated, the same phenomenon appears. Many of
these failing fountains no longer flow, because the brink over which
they ran is now too high, or because the elevation of the western side
of the country lifts the land away from the water supply below; but let
a cutting be made from a lower level than the brink, and through it to
a part below the surface of the water, and water flows perennially.
Several of these ancient fountains have been resuscitated by the
Bechuanas near Kuruman, who occasionally show their feelings of
self-esteem by laboring for months at deep cuttings, which, having
once begun, they feel bound in honor to persevere in, though told by a
missionary that they can never force water to run up hill.

It is interesting to observe the industry of many Boers in this region
in making long and deep canals from lower levels up to spots destitute
of the slightest indication of water existing beneath except a few
rushes and a peculiar kind of coarse, reddish-colored grass growing in a
hollow, which anciently must have been the eye of a fountain, but is now
filled up with soft tufa. In other instances, the indication of water
below consists of the rushes growing on a long, sandy ridge a foot or
two in height instead of in a furrow. A deep transverse cutting made
through the higher part of this is rewarded by a stream of running
water. The reason why the ground covering this water is higher than the
rest of the locality is that the winds carry quantities of fine dust and
sand about the country, and hedges, bushes, and trees cause its deposit.
The rushes in this case perform the part of the hedges, and the moisture
rising as dew by night fixes the sand securely among the roots, and a
height, instead of a hollow, is the result. While on this subject it may
be added that there is no perennial fountain in this part of the
country except those that come from beneath the quartzose trap, which
constitutes the "filling up" of the ancient valley; and as the water
supply seems to rest on the old silurian schists which form its bottom,
it is highly probable that Artesian wells would in several places
perform the part which these deep cuttings now do.

The aspect of this part of the country during most of the year is of a
light yellow color; for some months during the rainy season it is of a
pleasant green mixed with yellow. Ranges of hills appear in the west,
but east of them we find hundreds of miles of grass-covered plains.
Large patches of these flats are covered with white calcareous tufa
resting on perfectly horizontal strata of trap. There the vegetation
consists of fine grass growing in tufts among low bushes of the
"wait-a-bit" thorn ('Acacia detinens'), with its annoying fish-hook-like
spines. Where these rocks do not appear on the surface, the soil
consists of yellow sand and tall, coarse grasses, growing among
berry-yielding bushes, named moretloa ('Grewia flava') and mohatla
('Tarchonanthus'), which has enough of aromatic resinous matter to burn
brightly, though perfectly green. In more sheltered spots we come
on clumps of the white-thorned mimosa ('Acacia horrida', also 'A.
atomiphylla'), and great abundance of wild sage ('Salvia Africana'), and
various leguminosae, ixias, and large-flowering bulbs: the 'Amaryllis
toxicaria' and 'A. Brunsvigia multiflora' (the former a poisonous bulb)
yield in the decayed lamellae a soft, silky down, a good material for
stuffing mattresses.

In some few parts of the country the remains of ancient forests of wild
olive-trees ('Olea similis') and of the camel-thorn ('Acacia giraffe')
are still to be met with; but when these are leveled in the proximity of
a Bechuana village, no young trees spring up to take their places. This
is not because the wood has a growth so slow as not to be appreciable
in its increase during the short period that it can be observed by man,
which might be supposed from its being so excessively hard; for having
measured a young tree of this species growing in the corner of Mr.
Moffat's garden near the water, I found that it increased at the rate
of a quarter of an inch in diameter annually during a number of years.
Moreover, the larger specimens, which now find few or no successors, if
they had more rain in their youth, can not be above two or three hundred
years old.

It is probable that this is the tree of which the Ark of the Covenant
and the Tabernacle were constructed, as it is reported to be found where
the Israelites were at the time these were made. It is an imperishable
wood, while that usually pointed out as the "shittim" (or 'Acacia
nilotica') soon decays and wants beauty.

In association with it we always observe a curious plant, named
ngotuane, which bears such a profusion of fine yellow strong-scented
flowers as quite to perfume the air. This plant forms a remarkable
exception to the general rule, that nearly all the plants in the dry
parts of Africa are scentless, or emit only a disagreeable odor. It,
moreover, contains an active poison; a French gentleman, having imbibed
a mouthful or two of an infusion of its flowers as tea, found himself
rendered nearly powerless. Vinegar has the peculiar property of
rendering this poison perfectly inert, whether in or out of the body.
When mixed with vinegar, the poison may be drunk with safety, while, if
only tasted by itself, it causes a burning sensation in the throat.
This gentleman described the action of the vinegar, when he was nearly
deprived of power by the poison imbibed, to have been as if electricity
had run along his nerves as soon as he had taken a single glassful.
The cure was instantaneous and complete. I had always to regret want of
opportunity for investigating this remarkable and yet controllable agent
on the nervous system. Its usual proximity to camel-thorn-trees may be
accounted for by the PROBABILITY that the giraffe, which feeds on this
tree, MAY make use of the plant as a medicine.

During the period of my visit at Kuruman, Mr. Moffat, who has been a
missionary in Africa during upward of forty years, and is well known by
his interesting work, "Scenes and Labors in South Africa", was busily
engaged in carrying through the press, with which his station is
furnished, the Bible in the language of the Bechuanas, which is called
Sichuana. This has been a work of immense labor; and as he was the first
to reduce their speech to a written form, and has had his attention
directed to the study for at least thirty years, he may be supposed to
be better adapted for the task than any man living. Some idea of the
copiousness of the language may be formed from the fact that even he
never spends a week at his work without discovering new words; the
phenomenon, therefore, of any man who, after a few months' or years'
study of a native tongue, cackles forth a torrent of vocables, may well
be wondered at, if it is meant to convey instruction. In my own case,
though I have had as much intercourse with the purest idiom as most
Englishmen, and have studied the language carefully, yet I can never
utter an important statement without doing so very slowly, and repeating
it too, lest the foreign accent, which is distinctly perceptible in all
Europeans, should render the sense unintelligible. In this I follow the
example of the Bechuana orators, who, on important matters, always speak
slowly, deliberately, and with reiteration. The capabilities of this
language may be inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch is fully
expressed in Mr. Moffat's translation in fewer words than in the Greek
Septuagint, and in a very considerably smaller number than in our
own English version. The language is, however, so simple in its
construction, that its copiousness by no means requires the explanation
that the people have fallen from a former state of civilization and
culture. Language seems to be an attribute of the human mind and
thought; and the inflections, various as they are in the most barbarous
tongues, as that of the Bushmen, are probably only proofs of the
race being human, and endowed with the power of thinking; the fuller
development of language taking place as the improvement of our other
faculties goes on. It is fortunate that the translation of the Bible has
been effected before the language became adulterated with half-uttered
foreign words, and while those who have heard the eloquence of the
native assemblies are still living; for the young, who are brought up
in our schools, know less of the language than the missionaries; and
Europeans born in the country, while possessed of the idiom perfectly,
if not otherwise educated, can not be referred to for explanation of any
uncommon word. A person who acted as interpreter to Sir George Cathcart
actually told his excellency that the language of the Basutos was not
capable of expressing the substance of a chief's diplomatic paper, while
every one acquainted with Moshesh, the chief who sent it, well knows
that he could in his own tongue have expressed it without study all over
again in three or four different ways. The interpreter could scarcely
have done as much in English.

This language both rich and poor speak correctly; there is no vulgar
style; but children have a 'patois' of their own, using many words in
their play which men would scorn to repeat. The Bamapela have adopted
a click into their dialect, and a large infusion of the ringing "ny",
which seems to have been for the purpose of preventing others from
understanding them.

The fact of the complete translation of the Bible at a station seven
hundred miles inland from the Cape naturally suggests the question
whether it is likely to be permanently useful, and whether Christianity,
as planted by modern missions, is likely to retain its vitality without
constant supplies of foreign teaching? It would certainly be no cause
for congratulation if the Bechuana Bible seemed at all likely to meet
the fate of Elliot's Choctaw version, a specimen of which may be seen in
the library of one of the American colleges--as God's word in a language
which no living tongue can articulate, nor living mortal understand; but
a better destiny seems in store for this, for the Sichuana language has
been introduced into the new country beyond Lake Ngami. There it is the
court language, and will take a stranger any where through a district
larger than France. The Bechuanas, moreover, in all probability possess
that imperishability which forms so remarkable a feature in the entire
African race.

When converts are made from heathenism by modern missionaries, it
becomes an interesting question whether their faith possesses
the elements of permanence, or is only an exotic too tender for
self-propagation when the fostering care of the foreign cultivators
is withdrawn. If neither habits of self-reliance are cultivated, nor
opportunities given for the exercise of that virtue, the most promising
converts are apt to become like spoiled children. In Madagascar, a few
Christians were left with nothing but the Bible in their hands; and
though exposed to persecution, and even death itself, as the penalty of
adherence to their profession, they increased ten-fold in numbers, and
are, if possible, more decided believers now than they were when, by
an edict of the queen of that island, the missionaries ceased their
teaching.

In South Africa such an experiment could not be made, for such a variety
of Christian sects have followed the footsteps of the London Missionary
Society's successful career, that converts of one denomination, if left
to their own resources, are eagerly adopted by another, and are thus
more likely to become spoiled than trained to the manly Christian
virtues.

Another element of weakness in this part of the missionary field is the
fact of the missionary societies considering the Cape Colony itself as
a proper sphere for their peculiar operations. In addition to a
well-organized and efficient Dutch Reformed Established Church, and
schools for secular instruction, maintained by government, in every
village of any extent in the colony, we have a number of other sects,
as the Wesleyans, Episcopalians, Moravians, all piously laboring at the
same good work. Now it is deeply to be regretted that so much honest
zeal should be so lavishly expended in a district wherein there is so
little scope for success. When we hear an agent of one sect urging his
friends at home to aid him quickly to occupy some unimportant nook,
because, if it is not speedily laid hold of, he will "not have room for
the sole of his foot," one can not help longing that both he and his
friends would direct their noble aspirations to the millions of untaught
heathen in the regions beyond, and no longer continue to convert the
extremity of the continent into, as it were, a dam of benevolence.

I would earnestly recommend all young missionaries to go at once to the
real heathen, and never to be content with what has been made ready
to their hands by men of greater enterprise. The idea of making model
Christians of the young need not be entertained by any one who is
secretly convinced, as most men who know their own hearts are, that he
is not a model Christian himself. The Israelitish slaves brought out of
Egypt by Moses were not converted and elevated in one generation, though
under the direct teaching of God himself. Notwithstanding the numbers of
miracles he wrought, a generation had to be cut off because of
unbelief. Our own elevation, also, has been the work of centuries, and,
remembering this, we should not indulge in overwrought expectations as
to the elevation which those who have inherited the degradation of ages
may attain in our day. The principle might even be adopted by missionary
societies, that one ordinary missionary's lifetime of teaching should
be considered an ample supply of foreign teaching for any tribe in a
thinly-peopled country, for some never will receive the Gospel at all,
while in other parts, when Christianity is once planted, the work is
sure to go on. A missionary is soon known to be supported by his friends
at home; and though the salary is but a bare subsistence, to Africans
it seems an enormous sum; and, being unable to appreciate the motives
by which he is actuated, they consider themselves entitled to various
services at his hands, and defrauded if these are not duly rendered.
This feeling is all the stronger when a young man, instead of going
boldly to the real heathen, settles down in a comfortable house and
garden prepared by those into whose labors he has entered. A remedy for
this evil might be found in appropriating the houses and gardens raised
by the missionaries' hands to their own families. It is ridiculous
to call such places as Kuruman, for instance, "Missionary Society's
property". This beautiful station was made what it is, not by English
money, but by the sweat and toil of fathers whose children have,
notwithstanding, no place on earth which they can call a home. The
Society's operations may be transferred to the north, and then the
strong-built mission premises become the home of a Boer, and the stately
stone church his cattle-pen. This place has been what the monasteries
of Europe are said to have been when pure. The monks did not disdain to
hold the plow. They introduced fruit-trees, flowers, and vegetables, in
addition to teaching and emancipating the serfs. Their monasteries were
mission stations, which resembled ours in being dispensaries for the
sick, almshouses for the poor, and nurseries of learning. Can we learn
nothing from them in their prosperity as the schools of Europe, and see
naught in their history but the pollution and laziness of their decay?
Can our wise men tell us why the former mission stations (primitive
monasteries) were self-supporting, rich, and flourishing as pioneers of
civilization and agriculture, from which we even now reap benefits, and
modern mission stations are mere pauper establishments, without that
permanence or ability to be self-supporting which they possessed?

Protestant missionaries of every denomination in South Africa all agree
in one point, that no mere profession of Christianity is sufficient
to entitle the converts to the Christian name. They are all anxious to
place the Bible in the hands of the natives, and, with ability to
read that, there can be little doubt as to the future. We believe
Christianity to be divine, and equal to all it has to perform; then let
the good seed be widely sown, and, no matter to what sect the converts
may belong, the harvest will be glorious. Let nothing that I have
said be interpreted as indicative of feelings inimical to any body
of Christians, for I never, as a missionary, felt myself to be either
Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Independent, or called upon in any way
to love one denomination less than another. My earnest desire is, that
those who really have the best interests of the heathen at heart should
go to them; and assuredly, in Africa at least, self-denying labors among
real heathen will not fail to be appreciated. Christians have never yet
dealt fairly by the heathen and been disappointed.

When Sechele understood that we could no longer remain with him
at Kolobeng, he sent his children to Mr. Moffat, at Kuruman, for
instruction in all the knowledge of the white men. Mr. Moffat very
liberally received at once an accession of five to his family, with
their attendants.

Having been detained at Kuruman about a fortnight by the breaking of a
wagon-wheel, I was thus providentially prevented from being present
at the attack of the Boers on the Bakwains, news of which was brought,
about the end of that time, by Masebele, the wife of Sechele. She had
herself been hidden in a cleft of a rock, over which a number of Boers
were firing. Her infant began to cry, and, terrified lest this should
attract the attention of the men, the muzzles of whose guns appeared at
every discharge over her head, she took off her armlets as playthings
to quiet the child. She brought Mr. Moffat a letter, which tells its own
tale. Nearly literally translated it was as follows:

"Friend of my heart's love, and of all the confidence of my heart, I
am Sechele. I am undone by the Boers, who attacked me, though I had no
guilt with them. They demanded that I should be in their kingdom, and
I refused. They demanded that I should prevent the English and Griquas
from passing (northward). I replied, These are my friends, and I can
prevent no one (of them). They came on Saturday, and I besought them not
to fight on Sunday, and they assented. They began on Monday morning at
twilight, and fired with all their might, and burned the town with fire,
and scattered us. They killed sixty of my people, and captured women,
and children, and men. And the mother of Baleriling (a former wife of
Sechele) they also took prisoner. They took all the cattle and all the
goods of the Bakwains; and the house of Livingstone they plundered,
taking away all his goods. The number of wagons they had was
eighty-five, and a cannon; and after they had stolen my own wagon and
that of Macabe, then the number of their wagons (counting the cannon
as one) was eighty-eight. All the goods of the hunters (certain English
gentlemen hunting and exploring in the north) were burned in the town;
and of the Boers were killed twenty-eight. Yes, my beloved friend, now
my wife goes to see the children, and Kobus Hae will convey her to you.
I am, SECHELE, The Son of Mochoasele."

This statement is in exact accordance with the account given by
the native teacher Mebalwe, and also that sent by some of the Boers
themselves to the public colonial papers. The crime of cattle-stealing,
of which we hear so much near Caffreland, was never alleged against
these people, and, if a single case had occurred when I was in the
country, I must have heard of it, and would at once say so. But the only
crime imputed in the papers was that "Sechele was getting too saucy."
The demand made for his subjection and service in preventing the English
traders passing to the north was kept out of view.

Very soon after Pretorius had sent the marauding party against Kolobeng,
he was called away to the tribunal of infinite justice. His policy is
justified by the Boers generally from the instructions given to the
Jewish warriors in Deuteronomy 20:10-14. Hence, when he died, the
obituary notice ended with "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." I
wish he had not "forbidden us to preach unto the Gentiles that they may
be saved."

The report of this outrage on the Bakwains, coupled with denunciations
against myself for having, as it was alleged, taught them to kill Boers,
produced such a panic in the country, that I could not engage a single
servant to accompany me to the north. I have already alluded to their
mode of warfare, and in all previous Boerish forays the killing had all
been on one side; now, however, that a tribe where an Englishman had
lived had begun to shed THEIR blood as well, it was considered the
strongest presumptive evidence against me. Loud vows of vengeance were
uttered against my head, and threats of instant pursuit by a large party
on horseback, should I dare to go into or beyond their country; and as
these were coupled with the declaration that the English government
had given over the whole of the native tribes to their rule, and would
assist in their entire subjection by preventing fire-arms and ammunition
from entering the country, except for the use of the Boers, it was not
to be wondered at that I was detained for months at Kuruman from sheer
inability to get wagon-drivers. The English name, from being honored and
respected all over the country, had become somewhat more than suspected;
and as the policy of depriving those friendly tribes of the means of
defense was represented by the Boers as proof positive of the wish of
the English that they should be subjugated, the conduct of a government
which these tribes always thought the paragon of justice and friendship
was rendered totally incomprehensible to them; they could neither defend
themselves against their enemies, nor shoot the animals in the produce
of which we wished them to trade.

At last I found three servants willing to risk a journey to the north;
and a man of color named George Fleming, who had generously been
assisted by Mr. H. E. Rutherford, a mercantile gentleman of Cape Town,
to endeavor to establish a trade with the Makololo, had also managed
to get a similar number; we accordingly left Kuruman on the 20th of
November, and proceeded on our journey. Our servants were the worst
possible specimens of those who imbibe the vices without the virtues of
Europeans, but we had no choice, and were glad to get away on any terms.

When we reached Motito, forty miles off, we met Sechele on his way, as
he said, "to the Queen of England." Two of his own children, and their
mother, a former wife, were among the captives seized by the Boers; and
being strongly imbued with the then very prevalent notion of England's
justice and generosity, he thought that in consequence of the violated
treaty he had a fair case to lay before her majesty. He employed all his
eloquence and powers of persuasion to induce me to accompany him, but I
excused myself on the ground that my arrangements were already made
for exploring the north. On explaining the difficulties of the way,
and endeavoring to dissuade him from the attempt, on account of the
knowledge I possessed of the governor's policy, he put the pointed
question, "Will the queen not listen to me, supposing I should reach
her?" I replied, "I believe she would listen, but the difficulty is
to get to her." "Well, I shall reach her," expressed his final
determination. Others explained the difficulties more fully, but nothing
could shake his resolution. When he reached Bloemfontein he found the
English army just returning from a battle with the Basutos, in which
both parties claimed the victory, and both were glad that a second
engagement was not tried. Our officers invited Sechele to dine with
them, heard his story, and collected a handsome sum of money to enable
him to pursue his journey to England. The commander refrained from
noticing him, as a single word in favor of the restoration of the
children of Sechele would have been a virtual confession of the failure
of his own policy at the very outset. Sechele proceeded as far as the
Cape; but his resources being there expended, he was obliged to return
to his own country, one thousand miles distant, without accomplishing
the object of his journey.

On his return he adopted a mode of punishment which he had seen in the
colony, namely, making criminals work on the public roads. And he has
since, I am informed, made himself the missionary to his own people.
He is tall, rather corpulent, and has more of the negro feature than
common, but has large eyes. He is very dark, and his people swear by
"Black Sechele". He has great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent
speaker. Great numbers of the tribes formerly living under the Boers
have taken refuge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he
was before the attack on Kolobeng.

Having parted with Sechele, we skirted along the Kalahari Desert, and
sometimes within its borders, giving the Boers a wide berth. A
larger fall of rain than usual had occurred in 1852, and that was the
completion of a cycle of eleven or twelve years, at which the same
phenomenon is reported to have happened on three occasions. An unusually
large crop of melons had appeared in consequence. We had the pleasure
of meeting with Mr. J. Macabe returning from Lake Ngami, which he had
succeeded in reaching by going right across the Desert from a point
a little to the south of Kolobeng. The accounts of the abundance of
watermelons were amply confirmed by this energetic traveler; for, having
these in vast quantities, his cattle subsisted on the fluid contained in
them for a period of no less than twenty-one days; and when at last
they reached a supply of water, they did not seem to care much about it.
Coming to the lake from the southeast, he crossed the Teoughe, and went
round the northern part of it, and is the only European traveler who had
actually seen it all. His estimate of the extent of the lake is higher
than that given by Mr. Oswell and myself, or from about ninety to one
hundred miles in circumference. Before the lake was discovered, Macabe
wrote a letter in one of the Cape papers recommending a certain route
as likely to lead to it. The Transvaal Boers fined him 500 dollars for
writing about "ouze felt", OUR country, and imprisoned him, too, till
the fine was paid. I now learned from his own lips that the public
report of this is true. Mr. Macabe's companion, Mahar, was mistaken by a
tribe of Barolongs for a Boer, and shot as he approached their village.
When Macabe came up and explained that he was an Englishman, they
expressed the utmost regret, and helped to bury him. This was the first
case in recent times of an Englishman being slain by the Bechuanas.
We afterward heard that there had been some fighting between these
Barolongs and the Boers, and that there had been capturing of cattle on
both sides. If this was true, I can only say that it was the first time
that I ever heard of cattle being taken by Bechuanas. This was a Caffre
war in stage the second; the third stage in the development is when both
sides are equally well armed and afraid of each other; the fourth, when
the English take up a quarrel not their own, and the Boers slip out of
the fray.

Two other English gentlemen crossed and recrossed the Desert about the
same time, and nearly in the same direction. On returning, one of them,
Captain Shelley, while riding forward on horseback, lost himself, and
was obliged to find his way alone to Kuruman, some hundreds of miles
distant. Reaching that station shirtless, and as brown as a Griqua,
he was taken for one by Mrs. Moffat, and was received by her with a
salutation in Dutch, that being the language spoken by this people.
His sufferings must have been far more severe than any we endured. The
result of the exertions of both Shelley and Macabe is to prove that
the general view of the Desert always given by the natives has been
substantially correct.

Occasionally, during the very dry seasons which succeed our winter and
precede our rains, a hot wind blows over the Desert from north to south.
It feels somewhat as if it came from an oven, and seldom blows longer at
a time than three days. It resembles in its effects the harmattan of the
north of Africa, and at the time the missionaries first settled in the
country, thirty-five years ago, it came loaded with fine reddish-colored
sand. Though no longer accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture
as to cause the wood of the best seasoned English boxes and furniture to
shrink, so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped.
The verls of ramrods made in England are loosened, and on returning to
Europe fasten again. This wind is in such an electric state that a bunch
of ostrich feathers held a few seconds against it becomes as strongly
charged as if attached to a powerful electrical machine, and clasps the
advancing hand with a sharp crackling sound.

When this hot wind is blowing, and even at other times, the peculiarly
strong electrical state of the atmosphere causes the movement of a
native in his kaross to produce therein a stream of small sparks. The
first time I noticed this appearance was while a chief was traveling
with me in my wagon. Seeing part of the fur of his mantle, which was
exposed to slight friction by the movement of the wagon, assume quite
a luminous appearance, I rubbed it smartly with the hand, and found it
readily gave out bright sparks, accompanied with distinct cracks. "Don't
you see this?" said I. "The white men did not show us this," he replied;
"we had it long before white men came into the country, we and our
forefathers of old." Unfortunately, I never inquired the name which they
gave to this appearance, but I have no doubt there is one for it in the
language. Otto von Guerrike is said, by Baron Humboldt, to have been the
first that ever observed this effect in Europe, but the phenomenon had
been familiar to the Bechuanas for ages. Nothing came of that, however,
for they viewed the sight as if with the eyes of an ox. The human mind
has remained here as stagnant to the present day, in reference to the
physical operations of the universe, as it once did in England. No
science has been developed, and few questions are ever discussed except
those which have an intimate connection with the wants of the stomach.

Very large flocks of swifts ('Cypselus apus') were observed flying over
the plains north of Kuruman. I counted a stream of them, which, by the
time it took to pass toward the reeds of that valley, must have numbered
upward of four thousand. Only a few of these birds breed at any time in
this country. I have often observed them, and noticed that there was no
appearance of their having paired; there was no chasing of each other,
nor any playing together. There are several other birds which continue
in flocks, and move about like wandering gipsies, even during the
breeding season, which in this country happens in the intervals between
the cold and hot seasons, cold acting somewhat in the same way here
as the genial warmth of spring does in Europe. Are these the migratory
birds of Europe, which return there to breed and rear their young?

On the 31st of December, 1852, we reached the town of Sechele, called,
from the part of the range on which it is situated, Litubaruba. Near
the village there exists a cave named Lepelole; it is an interesting
evidence of the former existence of a gushing fountain. No one dared to
enter the Lohaheng, or cave, for it was the common belief that it was
the habitation of the Deity. As we never had a holiday from January to
December, and our Sundays were the periods of our greatest exertions in
teaching, I projected an excursion into the cave on a week-day to see
the god of the Bakwains. The old men said that every one who went in
remained there forever, adding, "If the teacher is so mad as to kill
himself, let him do so alone, we shall not be to blame." The declaration
of Sechele, that he would follow where I led, produced the greatest
consternation. It is curious that in all their pretended dreams or
visions of their god he has always a crooked leg, like the Egyptian
Thau. Supposing that those who were reported to have perished in this
cave had fallen over some precipice, we went well provided with lights,
ladder, lines, &c.; but it turned out to be only an open cave, with
an entrance about ten feet square, which contracts into two water-worn
branches, ending in round orifices through which the water once flowed.
The only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were baboons. I left
at the end of the upper branch one of Father Mathew's leaden teetotal
tickets.

I never saw the Bakwains looking so haggard and lean as at this time.
Most of their cattle had been swept away by the Boers, together with
about eighty fine draught oxen; and much provision left with them by
two officers, Captains Codrington and Webb, to serve for their return
journey south, had been carried off also. On their return these officers
found the skeletons of the Bakwains where they expected to find their
own goods. All the corn, clothing, and furniture of the people, too,
had been consumed in the flames which the Boers had forced the subject
tribes to apply to the town during the fight, so that its inhabitants
were now literally starving.

Sechele had given orders to his people not to commit any act of revenge
pending his visit to the Queen of England; but some of the young men
ventured to go to meet a party of Boers returning from hunting, and,
as the Boers became terrified and ran off, they brought their wagons to
Litubaruba. This seems to have given the main body of Boers an idea that
the Bakwains meant to begin a guerrilla war upon them. This "Caffre war"
was, however, only in embryo, and not near that stage of development in
which the natives have found out that the hide-and-seek system is the
most successful.

The Boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace! I,
being present, heard the condition: "Sechele's children must be restored
to him." I never saw men so completely and unconsciously in a trap as
these four Boers were. Strong parties of armed Bakwains occupied every
pass in the hills and gorges around; and had they not promised much more
than they intended, or did perform, that day would have been their last.
The commandant Scholz had appropriated the children of Sechele to be his
own domestic slaves. I was present when one little boy, Khari, son of
Sechele, was returned to his mother; the child had been allowed to
roll into the fire, and there were three large unbound open sores on
different parts of his body. His mother and the women received him with
a flood of silent tears.

Slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places. The Boers
assert that they are the best of masters, and that, if the English had
possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have received much worse
treatment than they did: what that would have been it is difficult to
imagine. I took down the names of some scores of boys and girls, many of
whom I knew as our scholars; but I could not comfort the weeping mothers
by any hope of their ever returning from slavery.

The Bechuanas are universally much attached to children. A little child
toddling near a party of men while they are eating is sure to get
a handful of the food. This love of children may arise, in a great
measure, from the patriarchal system under which they dwell. Every
little stranger forms an increase of property to the whole community,
and is duly reported to the chief--boys being more welcome than girls.
The parents take the name of the child, and often address their children
as Ma (mother), or Ra (father). Our eldest boy being named Robert, Mrs.
Livingstone was, after his birth, always addressed as Ma-Robert, instead
of Mary, her Christian name.

I have examined several cases in which a grandmother has taken upon
herself to suckle a grandchild. Masina of Kuruman had no children after
the birth of her daughter Sina, and had no milk after Sina was weaned,
an event which usually is deferred till the child is two or three years
old. Sina married when she was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins;
Masina, after at least fifteen years' interval since she had suckled
a child, took possession of one of them, applied it to her breast, and
milk flowed, so that she was able to nurse the child entirely. Masina
was at this time at least forty years of age. I have witnessed several
other cases analogous to this. A grandmother of forty, or even less,
for they become withered at an early age, when left at home with a young
child, applies it to her own shriveled breast, and milk soon follows.
In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, the chief wife of Mahure, who was
about thirty-five years of age, the child was not entirely dependent on
the grandmother's breast, as the mother suckled it too. I had witnessed
the production of milk so frequently by the simple application of the
lips of the child, that I was not therefore surprised when told by
the Portuguese in Eastern Africa of a native doctor who, by applying
a poultice of the pounded larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman,
aided by the attempts of the child, could bring back the milk. Is it not
possible that the story in the "Cloud of Witnesses" of a man, during the
time of persecution in Scotland, putting his child to his own breast,
and finding, to the astonishment of the whole country, that milk
followed the act, may have been literally true? It was regarded and is
quoted as a miracle; but the feelings of the father toward the child of
a murdered mother must have been as nearly as possible analogous to the
maternal feeling; and, as anatomists declare the structure of both
male and female breasts to be identical, there is nothing physically
impossible in the alleged result. The illustrious Baron Humboldt quotes
an instance of the male breast yielding milk; and, though I am not
conscious of being over-credulous, the strange instances I have examined
in the opposite sex make me believe that there is no error in that
philosopher's statement.

The Boers know from experience that adult captives may as well be
left alone, for escape is so easy in a wild country that no
fugitive-slave-law can come into operation; they therefore adopt the
system of seizing only the youngest children, in order that these may
forget their parents and remain in perpetual bondage. I have seen mere
infants in their houses repeatedly. This fact was formerly denied; and
the only thing which was wanting to make the previous denial of the
practice of slavery and slave-hunting by the Transvaal Boers no longer
necessary was the declaration of their independence.

In conversation with some of my friends here I learned that Maleke, a
chief of the Bakwains, who formerly lived on the hill Litubaruba, had
been killed by the bite of a mad dog. My curiosity was strongly excited
by this statement, as rabies is so rare in this country. I never heard
of another case, and could not satisfy myself that even this was real
hydrophobia. While I was at Mabotsa, some dogs became affected by a
disease which led them to run about in an incoherent state; but I doubt
whether it was any thing but an affection of the brain. No individual
or animal got the complaint by inoculation from the animals' teeth;
and from all that I could hear, the prevailing idea of hydrophobia not
existing within the tropics seems to be quite correct.

The diseases known among the Bakwains are remarkably few. There is
no consumption nor scrofula, and insanity and hydrocephalus are rare.
Cancer and cholera are quite unknown. Small-pox and measles passed
through the country about twenty years ago, and committed great ravages;
but, though the former has since broken out on the coast repeatedly,
neither disease has since traveled inland. For small-pox, the natives
employed, in some parts, inoculation in the forehead with some animal
deposit; in other parts, they employed the matter of the small-pox
itself; and in one village they seem to have selected a virulent case
for the matter used in the operation, for nearly all the village was
swept off by the disease in a malignant confluent form. Where the idea
came from I can not conceive. It was practiced by the Bakwains at a
time when they had no intercourse, direct or indirect, with the southern
missionaries. They all adopt readily the use of vaccine virus when it is
brought within their reach.

A certain loathsome disease, which decimates the North American Indians,
and threatens extirpation to the South Sea Islanders, dies out in the
interior of Africa without the aid of medicine; and the Bangwaketse, who
brought it from the west coast, lost it when they came into their own
land southwest of Kolobeng. It seems incapable of permanence in any form
in persons of pure African blood any where in the centre of the country.
In persons of mixed blood it is otherwise; and the virulence of the
secondary symptoms seemed to be, in all the cases that came under my
care, in exact proportion to the greater or less amount of European
blood in the patient. Among the Corannas and Griquas of mixed breed it
produces the same ravages as in Europe; among half-blood Portuguese it
is equally frightful in its inroads on the system; but in the pure Negro
of the central parts it is quite incapable of permanence. Among the
Barotse I found a disease called manassah, which closely resembles that
of the 'foeda mulier' of history.

Equally unknown is stone in the bladder and gravel. I never met with a
case, though the waters are often so strongly impregnated with sulphate
of lime that kettles quickly become incrusted internally with the salt;
and some of my patients, who were troubled with indigestion, believed
that their stomachs had got into the same condition. This freedom from
calculi would appear to be remarkable in the negro race, even in the
United States; for seldom indeed have the most famed lithotomists there
ever operated on a negro.

The diseases most prevalent are the following: pneumonia, produced
by sudden changes of temperature, and other inflammations, as of the
bowels, stomach, and pleura; rheumatism; disease of the heart--but these
become rare as the people adopt the European dress--various forms of
indigestion and ophthalmia; hooping-cough comes frequently; and every
year the period preceding the rains is marked by some sort of epidemic.
Sometimes it is general ophthalmia, resembling closely the Egyptian. In
another year it is a kind of diarrhoea, which nothing will cure until
there is a fall of rain, and any thing acts as a charm after that.
One year the epidemic period was marked by a disease which looked like
pneumonia, but had the peculiar symptom strongly developed of great pain
in the seventh cervical process. Many persons died of it, after being
in a comatose state for many hours or days before their decease. No
inspection of the body being ever allowed by these people, and the place
of sepulture being carefully concealed, I had to rest satisfied with
conjecture. Frequently the Bakwains buried their dead in the huts where
they died, for fear lest the witches (Baloi) should disinter their
friends, and use some part of the body in their fiendish arts. Scarcely
is the breath out of the body when the unfortunate patient is hurried
away to be buried. An ant-eater's hole is often selected, in order to
save the trouble of digging a grave. On two occasions while I was there
this hasty burial was followed by the return home of the men, who had
been buried alive, to their affrighted relatives. They had recovered,
while in their graves, from prolonged swoons.

In ophthalmia the doctors cup on the temples, and apply to the eyes the
pungent smoke of certain roots, the patient, at the same time, taking
strong draughts of it up his nostrils. We found the solution of nitrate
of silver, two or three grains to the ounce of rain-water, answer
the same end so much more effectually, that every morning numbers
of patients crowded round our house for the collyrium. It is a good
preventive of an acute attack when poured into the eyes as soon as
the pain begins, and might prove valuable for travelers. Cupping is
performed with the horn of a goat or antelope, having a little hole
pierced in the small end. In some cases a small piece of wax is
attached, and a temporary hole made through it to the horn. When the
air is well withdrawn, and kept out by touching the orifice, at every
inspiration, with the point of the tongue, the wax is at last pressed
together with the teeth, and the little hole in it closed up, leaving a
vacuum within the horn for the blood to flow from the already scarified
parts. The edges of the horn applied to the surface are wetted, and
cupping is well performed, though the doctor occasionally, by separating
the fibrine from the blood in a basin of water by his side, and
exhibiting it, pretends that he has extracted something more than blood.
He can thus explain the rationale of the cure by his own art, and the
ocular demonstration given is well appreciated.

Those doctors who have inherited their profession as an heirloom
from their fathers and grandfathers generally possess some valuable
knowledge, the result of long and close observation; but if a man can
not say that the medical art is in his family, he may be considered
a quack. With the regular practitioners I always remained on the best
terms, by refraining from appearing to doubt their skill in the presence
of their patients. Any explanation in private was thankfully received
by them, and wrong treatment changed into something more reasonable with
cordial good-will, if no one but the doctor and myself were present at
the conversation. English medicines were eagerly asked for and accepted
by all; and we always found medical knowledge an important aid in
convincing the people that we were really anxious for their welfare.
We can not accuse them of ingratitude; in fact, we shall remember the
kindness of the Bakwains to us as long as we live.

The surgical knowledge of the native doctors is rather at a low ebb. No
one ever attempted to remove a tumor except by external applications.
Those with which the natives are chiefly troubled are fatty and fibrous
tumors; and as they all have the 'vis medicatrix naturae' in remarkable
activity, I safely removed an immense number. In illustration of their
want of surgical knowledge may be mentioned the case of a man who had a
tumor as large as a child's head. This was situated on the nape of his
neck, and prevented his walking straight. He applied to his chief, and
he got some famous strange doctor from the East Coast to cure him. He
and his assistants attempted to dissolve it by kindling on it a little
fire made of a few small pieces of medicinal roots. I removed it for
him, and he always walked with his head much more erect than he needed
to do ever afterward. Both men and women submit to an operation without
wincing, or any of that shouting which caused young students to faint in
the operating theatre before the introduction of chloroform. The women
pride themselves on their ability to bear pain. A mother will address
her little girl, from whose foot a thorn is to be extracted, with, "Now,
ma, you are a woman; a woman does not cry." A man scorns to shed tears.
When we were passing one of the deep wells in the Kalahari, a boy,
the son of an aged father, had been drowned in it while playing on its
brink. When all hope was gone, the father uttered an exceedingly great
and bitter cry. It was sorrow without hope. This was the only instance I
ever met with of a man weeping in this country.

Their ideas on obstetrics are equally unscientific, and a medical man
going near a woman at her confinement appeared to them more out of place
than a female medical student appears to us in a dissecting-room. A case
of twins, however, happening, and the ointment of all the doctors of
the town proving utterly insufficient to effect the relief which a few
seconds of English art afforded, the prejudice vanished at once. As it
would have been out of the question for me to have entered upon this
branch of the profession--as indeed it would be inexpedient for any
medical man to devote himself exclusively, in a thinly-peopled country,
to the practice of medicine--I thereafter reserved myself for the
difficult cases only, and had the satisfaction of often conferring great
benefits on poor women in their hour of sorrow. The poor creatures are
often placed in a little hut built for the purpose, and are left without
any assistance whatever, and the numbers of umbilical herniae which are
met with in consequence is very great. The women suffer less at their
confinement than is the case in civilized countries; perhaps from their
treating it, not as a disease, but as an operation of nature, requiring
no change of diet except a feast of meat and abundance of fresh air. The
husband on these occasions is bound to slaughter for his lady an ox, or
goat, or sheep, according to his means.

My knowledge in the above line procured for me great fame in a
department in which I could lay no claim to merit. A woman came a
distance of one hundred miles for relief in a complaint which seemed to
have baffled the native doctors; a complete cure was the result. Some
twelve months after she returned to her husband, she bore a son. Her
husband having previously reproached her for being barren, she sent me a
handsome present, and proclaimed all over the country that I possessed
a medicine for the cure of sterility. The consequence was, that I was
teased with applications from husbands and wives from all parts of the
country. Some came upward of two hundred miles to purchase the great
boon, and it was in vain for me to explain that I had only cured the
disease of the other case. The more I denied, the higher their offers
rose; they would give any money for the "child medicine"; and it was
really heart-rending to hear the earnest entreaty, and see the tearful
eye, which spoke the intense desire for offspring: "I am getting old;
you see gray hairs here and there on my head, and I have no child; you
know how Bechuana husbands cast their old wives away; what can I do? I
have no child to bring water to me when I am sick," etc.

The whole of the country adjacent to the Desert, from Kuruman to
Kolobeng, or Litubaruba, and beyond up to the latitude of Lake Ngami, is
remarkable for its great salubrity of climate. Not only the natives, but
Europeans whose constitutions have been impaired by an Indian climate,
find the tract of country indicated both healthy and restorative. The
health and longevity of the missionaries have always been fair, though
mission-work is not very conducive to either elsewhere. Cases have been
known in which patients have come from the coast with complaints closely
resembling, if they were not actually, those of consumption; and they
have recovered by the influence of the climate alone. It must always be
borne in mind that the climate near the coast, from which we received
such very favorable reports of the health of the British troops, is
actually inferior for persons suffering from pulmonary complaints to
that of any part not subjected to the influence of sea-air. I have
never seen the beneficial effects of the inland climate on persons of
shattered constitutions, nor heard their high praises of the benefit
they have derived from traveling, without wishing that its bracing
effects should become more extensively known in England. No one who
has visited the region I have above mentioned fails to remember with
pleasure the wild, healthful gipsy life of wagon-traveling.

A considerable proportion of animal diet seems requisite here.
Independent of the want of salt, we required meat in as large
quantity daily as we do in England, and no bad effects, in the way of
biliousness, followed the free use of flesh, as in other hot climates. A
vegetable diet causes acidity and heartburn.

Mr. Oswell thought this climate much superior to that of Peru, as far as
pleasure is concerned; the want of instruments unfortunately prevented
my obtaining accurate scientific data for the medical world on this
subject; and were it not for the great expense of such a trip, I should
have no hesitation in recommending the borders of the Kalahari Desert as
admirably suited for all patients having pulmonary complaints. It is
the complete antipodes to our cold, damp, English climate. The winter
is perfectly dry; and as not a drop of rain falls during that period,
namely, from the beginning of May to the end of August, damp and cold
are never combined. However hot the day may have been at Kolobeng--and
the thermometer sometimes rose, previous to a fall of rain, up to 96
Deg. in the coolest part of our house--yet the atmosphere never has that
steamy feeling nor those debilitating effects so well known in India
and on the coast of Africa itself. In the evenings the air becomes
deliciously cool, and a pleasant refreshing night follows the hottest
day. The greatest heat ever felt is not so oppressive as it is when
there is much humidity in the air; and the great evaporation consequent
on a fall of rain makes the rainy season the most agreeable for
traveling. Nothing can exceed the balmy feeling of the evenings and
mornings during the whole year. You wish for an increase neither of
cold nor heat; and you can sit out of doors till midnight without ever
thinking of colds or rheumatism; or you may sleep out at night, looking
up to the moon till you fall asleep, without a thought or sign of
moon-blindness. Indeed, during many months there is scarcely any dew.

Chapter 7.

Departure from the Country of the Bakwains--Large black Ant--Land
Tortoises--Diseases of wild Animals--Habits of old Lions--Cowardice of
the Lion--Its Dread of a Snare--Major Vardon's Note--The Roar of
the Lion resembles the Cry of the Ostrich--Seldom attacks full-grown
Animals--Buffaloes and Lions--Mice--Serpents--Treading on
one--Venomous and harmless Varieties--Fascination--Sekomi's Ideas
of Honesty--Ceremony of the Sechu for Boys--The Boyale for
young Women--Bamangwato Hills--The Unicorn's Pass--The Country
beyond--Grain--Scarcity of Water--Honorable Conduct of English
Gentlemen--Gordon Cumming's hunting Adventures--A Word of Advice
for young Sportsmen--Bushwomen drawing Water--Ostrich--Silly
Habit--Paces--Eggs--Food.

Having remained five days with the wretched Bakwains, seeing the effects
of war, of which only a very inadequate idea can ever be formed by those
who have not been eye-witnesses of its miseries, we prepared to depart
on the 15th of January, 1853. Several dogs, in better condition by far
than any of the people, had taken up their residence at the water. No
one would own them; there they had remained, and, coming on the trail
of the people, long after their departure from the scene of conflict, it
was plain they had

"Held o'er the dead their carnival."

Hence the disgust with which they were viewed.

On our way from Khopong, along the ancient river-bed which forms the
pathway to Boatlanama, I found a species of cactus, being the third I
have seen in the country, namely, one in the colony with a bright red
flower, one at Lake Ngami, the flower of which was liver-colored, and
the present one, flower unknown. That the plant is uncommon may be
inferred from the fact that the Bakwains find so much difficulty in
recognizing the plant again after having once seen it, that they believe
it has the power of changing its locality.

On the 21st of January we reached the wells of Boatlanama, and found
them for the first time empty. Lopepe, which I had formerly seen a
stream running from a large reedy pool, was also dry. The hot salt
spring of Serinane, east of Lopepe, being undrinkable, we pushed on to
Mashue for its delicious waters. In traveling through this country, the
olfactory nerves are frequently excited by a strong disagreeable odor.
This is caused by a large jet-black ant named "Leshonya". It is nearly
an inch in length, and emits a pungent smell when alarmed, in the same
manner as the skunk. The scent must be as volatile as ether, for, on
irritating the insect with a stick six feet long, the odor is instantly
perceptible.

Occasionally we lighted upon land tortoises, which, with their unlaid
eggs, make a very agreeable dish. We saw many of their trails leading
to the salt fountain; they must have come great distances for this
health-giving article. In lieu thereof they often devour wood-ashes. It
is wonderful how this reptile holds its place in the country. When seen,
it never escapes. The young are taken for the sake of their shells;
these are made into boxes, which, filled with sweet-smelling roots, the
women hang around their persons. When older it is used as food, and the
shell converted into a rude basin to hold food or water. It owes its
continuance neither to speed nor cunning. Its color, yellow and dark
brown, is well adapted, by its similarity to the surrounding grass
and brushwood, to render it indistinguishable; and, though it makes an
awkward attempt to run on the approach of man, its trust is in its bony
covering, from which even the teeth of a hyaena glance off foiled. When
this long-lived creature is about to deposit her eggs, she lets herself
into the ground by throwing the earth up round her shell, until only
the top is visible; then covering up the eggs, she leaves them until the
rains begin to fall and the fresh herbage appears; the young ones then
come out, their shells still quite soft, and, unattended by their dam,
begin the world for themselves. Their food is tender grass and a plant
named thotona, and they frequently resort to heaps of ashes and places
containing efflorescence of the nitrates for the salts these contain.

Inquiries among the Bushmen and Bakalahari, who are intimately
acquainted with the habits of the game, lead to the belief that many
diseases prevail among wild animals. I have seen the kokong or gnu, kama
or hartebeest, the tsessebe, kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be
uneatable even by the natives. Reference has already been made to the
peripneumonia which cuts off horses, tolos or koodoos. Great numbers
also of zebras are found dead with masses of foam at the nostrils,
exactly as occurs in the common "horse-sickness". The production of the
malignant carbuncle called kuatsi, or selonda, by the flesh when eaten,
is another proof of the disease of the tame and wild being identical.
I once found a buffalo blind from ophthalmia standing by the fountain
Otse; when he attempted to run he lifted up his feet in the manner
peculiar to blind animals. The rhinoceros has often worms on the
conjunction of his eyes; but these are not the cause of the dimness of
vision which will make him charge past a man who has wounded him, if
he stands perfectly still, in the belief that his enemy is a tree.
It probably arises from the horn being in the line of vision, for the
variety named kuabaoba, which has a straight horn directed downward away
from that line, possesses acute eyesight, and is much more wary.

All the wild animals are subject to intestinal worms besides. I have
observed bunches of a tape-like thread and short worms of enlarged sizes
in the rhinoceros. The zebra and elephants are seldom without them, and
a thread-worm may often be seen under the peritoneum of these animals.
Short red larvae, which convey a stinging sensation to the hand, are
seen clustering round the orifice of the windpipe (trachea) of this
animal at the back of the throat; others are seen in the frontal sinus
of antelopes; and curious flat, leech-like worms, with black eyes, are
found in the stomachs of leches. The zebra, giraffe, eland, and kukama
have been seen mere skeletons from decay of their teeth as well as from
disease.

The carnivora, too, become diseased and mangy; lions become lean and
perish miserably by reason of the decay of the teeth. When a lion
becomes too old to catch game, he frequently takes to killing goats in
the villages; a woman or child happening to go out at night falls a prey
too; and as this is his only source of subsistence now, he continues it.
From this circumstance has arisen the idea that the lion, when he has
once tasted human flesh, loves it better than any other. A man-eater is
invariably an old lion; and when he overcomes his fear of man so far as
to come to villages for goats, the people remark, "His teeth are worn,
he will soon kill men." They at once acknowledge the necessity of
instant action, and turn out to kill him. When living far away from
population, or when, as is the case in some parts, he entertains a
wholesome dread of the Bushmen and Bakalahari, as soon as either disease
or old age overtakes him, he begins to catch mice and other small
rodents, and even to eat grass; the natives, observing undigested
vegetable matter in his droppings, follow up his trail in the certainty
of finding him scarcely able to move under some tree, and dispatch him
without difficulty. The grass may have been eaten as medicine, as is
observed in dogs.

That the fear of man often remains excessively strong in the carnivora
is proved from well-authenticated cases in which the lioness, in the
vicinity of towns where the large game had been unexpectedly driven
away by fire-arms, has been known to assuage the paroxysms of hunger by
devouring her own young. It must be added, that, though the effluvium
which is left by the footsteps of man is in general sufficient to induce
lions to avoid a village, there are exceptions; so many came about our
half-deserted houses at Chonuane while we were in the act of removing
to Kolobeng, that the natives who remained with Mrs. Livingstone were
terrified to stir out of doors in the evenings. Bitches, also, have been
known to be guilty of the horridly unnatural act of eating their
own young, probably from the great desire for animal food, which is
experienced by the inhabitants as well.

When a lion is met in the daytime, a circumstance by no means unfrequent
to travelers in these parts, if preconceived notions do not lead them
to expect something very "noble" or "majestic", they will see merely an
animal somewhat larger than the biggest dog they ever saw, and partaking
very strongly of the canine features; the face is not much like the
usual drawings of a lion, the nose being prolonged like a dog's; not
exactly such as our painters make it--though they might learn better at
the Zoological Gardens--their ideas of majesty being usually shown by
making their lions' faces like old women in nightcaps. When encountered
in the daytime, the lion stands a second or two, gazing, then turns
slowly round, and walks as slowly away for a dozen paces, looking over
his shoulder; then begins to trot, and, when he thinks himself out of
sight, bounds off like a greyhound. By day there is not, as a rule, the
smallest danger of lions which are not molested attacking man, nor
even on a clear moonlight night, except when they possess the breeding
storgh* (natural affection); this makes them brave almost any danger;
and if a man happens to cross to the windward of them, both lion and
lioness will rush at him, in the manner of a bitch with whelps. This
does not often happen, as I only became aware of two or three instances
of it. In one case a man, passing where the wind blew from him to the
animals, was bitten before he could climb a tree; and occasionally a man
on horseback has been caught by the leg under the same circumstances. So
general, however, is the sense of security on moonlight nights, that we
seldom tied up our oxen, but let them lie loose by the wagons; while on
a dark, rainy night, if a lion is in the neighborhood, he is almost sure
to venture to kill an ox. His approach is always stealthy, except when
wounded; and any appearance of a trap is enough to cause him to refrain
from making the last spring. This seems characteristic of the feline
species; when a goat is picketed in India for the purpose of enabling
the huntsmen to shoot a tiger by night, if on a plain, he would whip off
the animal so quickly by a stroke of the paw that no one could take aim;
to obviate this, a small pit is dug, and the goat is picketed to a stake
in the bottom; a small stone is tied in the ear of the goat, which makes
him cry the whole night. When the tiger sees the appearance of a trap,
he walks round and round the pit, and allows the hunter, who is lying in
wait, to have a fair shot.

   * (Greek) sigma-tau-omicron-rho-gamma-eta.

When a lion is very hungry, and lying in wait, the sight of an animal
may make him commence stalking it. In one case a man, while stealthily
crawling towards a rhinoceros, happened to glance behind him, and found
to his horror a lion STALKING HIM; he only escaped by springing up a
tree like a cat. At Lopepe a lioness sprang on the after quarter of Mr.
Oswell's horse, and when we came up to him we found the marks of the
claws on the horse, and a scratch on Mr. O.'s hand. The horse, on
feeling the lion on him, sprang away, and the rider, caught by a
wait-a-bit thorn, was brought to the ground and rendered insensible.
His dogs saved him. Another English gentleman (Captain Codrington) was
surprised in the same way, though not hunting the lion at the time,
but turning round he shot him dead in the neck. By accident a horse
belonging to Codrington ran away, but was stopped by the bridle catching
a stump; there he remained a prisoner two days, and when found the whole
space around was marked by the footprints of lions. They had evidently
been afraid to attack the haltered horse from fear that it was a trap.
Two lions came up by night to within three yards of oxen tied to a
wagon, and a sheep tied to a tree, and stood roaring, but afraid to make
a spring. On another occasion one of our party was lying sound asleep
and unconscious of danger between two natives behind a bush at Mashue;
the fire was nearly out at their feet in consequence of all being
completely tired out by the fatigues of the previous day; a lion came up
to within three yards of the fire, and there commenced roaring instead
of making a spring: the fact of their riding-ox being tied to the bush
was the only reason the lion had for not following his instinct, and
making a meal of flesh. He then stood on a knoll three hundred yards
distant, and roared all night, and continued his growling as the party
moved off by daylight next morning.

Nothing that I ever learned of the lion would lead me to attribute to
it either the ferocious or noble character ascribed to it elsewhere. It
possesses none of the nobility of the Newfoundland or St. Bernard dogs.
With respect to its great strength there can be no doubt. The immense
masses of muscle around its jaws, shoulders, and forearms proclaim
tremendous force. They would seem, however, to be inferior in power to
those of the Indian tiger. Most of those feats of strength that I have
seen performed by lions, such as the taking away of an ox, were not
carrying, but dragging or trailing the carcass along the ground: they
have sprung on some occasions on to the hind-quarters of a horse, but no
one has ever seen them on the withers of a giraffe. They do not mount on
the hind-quarters of an eland even, but try to tear him down with their
claws. Messrs. Oswell and Vardon once saw three lions endeavoring to
drag down a buffalo, and they were unable to do so for a time, though he
was then mortally wounded by a two-ounce ball.*

   * This singular encounter, in the words of an eye-witness,
   happened as follows:

   "My South African Journal is now before me, and I have got
   hold of the account of the lion and buffalo affair; here it
   is: '15th September, 1846.  Oswell and I were riding this
   afternoon along the banks of the Limpopo, when a waterbuck
   started in front of us. I dismounted, and was following it
   through the jungle, when three buffaloes got up, and, after
   going a little distance, stood still, and the nearest bull
   turned round and looked at me. A ball from the two-ouncer
   crashed into his shoulder, and they all three made off.
   Oswell and I followed as soon as I had reloaded, and when we
   were in sight of the buffalo, and gaining on him at every
   stride, three lions leaped on the unfortunate brute; he
   bellowed most lustily as he kept up a kind of running fight,
   but he was, of course, soon overpowered and pulled down. We
   had a fine view of the struggle, and saw the lions on their
   hind legs tearing away with teeth and claws in most ferocious
   style.  We crept up within thirty yards, and, kneeling down,
   blazed away at the lions. My rifle was a single barrel, and I
   had no spare gun. One lion fell dead almost ON the buffalo; he
   had merely time to turn toward us, seize a bush with his
   teeth, and drop dead with the stick in his jaws.  The second
   made off immediately; and the third raised his head, coolly
   looked round for a moment, then went on tearing and biting at
   the carcass as hard as ever. We retired a short distance to
   load, then again advanced and fired. The lion made off, but a
   ball that he received OUGHT to have stopped him, as it went
   clean through his shoulder-blade.  He was followed up and
   killed, after having charged several times.  Both lions were
   males. It is not often that one BAGS a brace of lions and a
   bull buffalo in about ten minutes.  It was an exciting
   adventure, and I shall never forget it.'

   "Such, my dear Livingstone, is the plain unvarnished account.
   The buffalo had, of course, gone close to where the lions were
   lying down for the day; and they, seeing him lame and
   bleeding, thought the opportunity too good a one to be lost.

   "Ever yours, Frank Vardon."

In general the lion seizes the animal he is attacking by the flank near
the hind leg, or by the throat below the jaw. It is questionable whether
he ever attempts to seize an animal by the withers. The flank is the
most common point of attack, and that is the part he begins to feast
on first. The natives and lions are very similar in their tastes in the
selection of tit-bits: an eland may be seen disemboweled by a lion so
completely that he scarcely seems cut up at all. The bowels and fatty
parts form a full meal for even the largest lion. The jackal comes
sniffing about, and sometimes suffers for his temerity by a stroke from
the lion's paw laying him dead. When gorged, the lion falls fast asleep,
and is then easily dispatched. Hunting a lion with dogs involves very
little danger as compared with hunting the Indian tiger, because the
dogs bring him out of cover and make him stand at bay, giving the hunter
plenty of time for a good deliberate shot.

Where game is abundant, there you may expect lions in proportionately
large numbers. They are never seen in herds, but six or eight, probably
one family, occasionally hunt together. One is in much more danger of
being run over when walking in the streets of London, than he is of
being devoured by lions in Africa, unless engaged in hunting the animal.
Indeed, nothing that I have seen or heard about lions would constitute a
barrier in the way of men of ordinary courage and enterprise.

The same feeling which has induced the modern painter to caricature the
lion, has led the sentimentalist to consider the lion's roar the most
terrific of all earthly sounds. We hear of the "majestic roar of the
king of beasts." It is, indeed, well calculated to inspire fear if
you hear it in combination with the tremendously loud thunder of that
country, on a night so pitchy dark that every flash of the intensely
vivid lightning leaves you with the impression of stone-blindness, while
the rain pours down so fast that your fire goes out, leaving you without
the protection of even a tree, or the chance of your gun going off.
But when you are in a comfortable house or wagon, the case is very
different, and you hear the roar of the lion without any awe or alarm.
The silly ostrich makes a noise as loud, yet he never was feared by man.
To talk of the majestic roar of the lion is mere majestic twaddle. On
my mentioning this fact some years ago, the assertion was doubted, so I
have been careful ever since to inquire the opinions of Europeans, who
have heard both, if they could detect any difference between the roar
of a lion and that of an ostrich; the invariable answer was, that they
could not when the animal was at any distance. The natives assert that
they can detect a variation between the commencement of the noise of
each. There is, it must be admitted, considerable difference between
the singing noise of a lion when full, and his deep, gruff growl when
hungry. In general the lion's voice seems to come deeper from the chest
than that of the ostrich, but to this day I can distinguish between them
with certainty only by knowing that the ostrich roars by day and the
lion by night.

The African lion is of a tawny color, like that of some mastiffs. The
mane in the male is large, and gives the idea of great power. In some
lions the ends of the hair of the mane are black; these go by the name
of black-maned lions, though as a whole all look of the yellow tawny
color. At the time of the discovery of the lake, Messrs. Oswell and
Wilson shot two specimens of another variety. One was an old lion, whose
teeth were mere stumps, and his claws worn quite blunt; the other was
full grown, in the prime of life, with white, perfect teeth; both were
entirely destitute of mane. The lions in the country near the lake give
tongue less than those further south. We scarcely ever heard them roar
at all.

The lion has other checks on inordinate increase besides man. He seldom
attacks full-grown animals; but frequently, when a buffalo calf is
caught by him, the cow rushes to the rescue, and a toss from her often
kills him. One we found was killed thus; and on the Leeambye another,
which died near Sesheke, had all the appearance of having received his
death-blow from a buffalo. It is questionable if a single lion ever
attacks a full-grown buffalo. The amount of roaring heard at night, on
occasions when a buffalo is killed, seems to indicate there are always
more than one lion engaged in the onslaught.

On the plain, south of Sebituane's ford, a herd of buffaloes kept a
number of lions from their young by the males turning their heads to
the enemy. The young and the cows were in the rear. One toss from a bull
would kill the strongest lion that ever breathed. I have been informed
that in one part of India even the tame buffaloes feel their superiority
to some wild animals, for they have been seen to chase a tiger up the
hills, bellowing as if they enjoyed the sport. Lions never go near any
elephants except the calves, which, when young, are sometimes torn
by them; every living thing retires before the lordly elephant, yet a
full-grown one would be an easier prey than the rhinoceros; the lion
rushes off at the mere sight of this latter beast.

In the country adjacent to Mashue great numbers of different kinds of
mice exist. The ground is often so undermined with their burrows that
the foot sinks in at every step. Little haycocks, about two feet high,
and rather more than that in breadth, are made by one variety of these
little creatures. The same thing is done in regions annually covered
with snow for obvious purposes, but it is difficult here to divine the
reason of the haymaking in the climate of Africa.*

   * 'Euryotis unisulcatus' (F. Cuvier), 'Mus pumelio' (Spar.),
   and 'Mus lehocla' (Smith), all possess this habit in a greater
   or less degree.  The first-named may be seen escaping danger
   with its young hanging to the after-part of its body.

Wherever mice abound, serpents may be expected, for the one preys on
the other. A cat in a house is therefore a good preventive against
the entrance of these noxious reptiles. Occasionally, however,
notwithstanding every precaution, they do find their way in, but even
the most venomous sorts bite only when put in bodily fear themselves, or
when trodden upon, or when the sexes come together. I once found a coil
of serpents' skins, made by a number of them twisting together in the
manner described by the Druids of old. When in the country, one feels
nothing of that alarm and loathing which we may experience when sitting
in a comfortable English room reading about them; yet they are nasty
things, and we seem to have an instinctive feeling against them. In
making the door for our Mabotsa house, I happened to leave a small
hole at the corner below. Early one morning a man came to call for some
article I had promised. I at once went to the door, and, it being dark,
trod on a serpent. The moment I felt the cold scaly skin twine round a
part of my leg, my latent instinct was roused, and I jumped up higher
than I ever did before or hope to do again, shaking the reptile off
in the leap. I probably trod on it near the head, and so prevented it
biting me, but did not stop to examine.

Some of the serpents are particularly venomous. One was killed at
Kolobeng of a dark brown, nearly black color, 8 feet 3 inches long. This
species (picakholu) is so copiously supplied with poison that, when a
number of dogs attack it, the first bitten dies almost instantaneously,
the second in about five minutes, the third in an hour or so, while
the fourth may live several hours. In a cattle-pen it produces great
mischief in the same way. The one we killed at Kolobeng continued to
distill clear poison from the fangs for hours after its head was cut
off. This was probably that which passes by the name of the "spitting
serpent", which is believed to be able to eject its poison into the eyes
when the wind favors its forcible expiration. They all require water,