Chapter 4…

Chapter 4

Leave Kolobeng again for the Country of Sebituane--Reach the Zouga-- The Tsetse--A Party of Englishmen--Death of Mr. Rider--Obtain Guides--Children fall sick with Fever--Relinquish the Attempt to reach Sebituane--Mr. Oswell's Elephant-hunting--Return to Kolobeng--Make a third Start thence--Reach Nchokotsa--Salt-pans--"Links", or Springs--Bushmen--Our Guide Shobo--The Banajoa--An ugly Chief--The Tsetse--Bite fatal to domestic Animals, but harmless to wild Animals and Man--Operation of the Poison--Losses caused by it--The Makololo-- Our Meeting with Sebituane--Sketch of his Career--His Courage and Conquests--Manoeuvres of the Batoka--He outwits them--His Wars with the Matebele--Predictions of a native Prophet--Successes of the Makololo--Renewed Attacks of the Matebele--The Island of Loyelo--Defeat of the Matebele--Sebituane's Policy--His Kindness to Strangers and to the Poor--His sudden Illness and Death--Succeeded by his Daughter--Her Friendliness to us--Discovery, in June, 1851, of the Zambesi flowing in the Centre of the Continent--Its Size--The Mambari--The Slave-trade--Determine to send Family to England--Return to the Cape in April, 1852--Safe Transit through the Caffre Country during Hostilities--Need of a "Special Correspondent"--Kindness of the London Missionary Society--Assistance afforded by the Astronomer Royal at the Cape.

Having returned to Kolobeng, I remained there till April, 1850, and then left in company with Mrs. Livingstone, our three children, and the chief Sechele--who had now bought a wagon of his own--in order to go across the Zouga at its lower end, with the intention of proceeding up the northern bank till we gained the Tamunak'le, and of then ascending that river to visit Sebituane in the north. Sekomi had given orders to fill up the wells which we had dug with so much labor at Serotli, so we took the more eastern route through the Bamangwato town and by Letloche. That chief asked why I had avoided him in our former journeys. I replied that my reason was that I knew he did not wish me to go to the lake, and I did not want to quarrel with him. "Well," he said, "you beat me then, and I am content."

Parting with Sechele at the ford, as he was eager to visit Lechulatebe, we went along the northern woody bank of the Zouga with great labor, having to cut down very many trees to allow the wagons to pass. Our losses by oxen falling into pitfalls were very heavy. The Bayeiye kindly opened the pits when they knew of our approach; but when that was not the case, we could blame no one on finding an established custom of the country inimical to our interests. On approaching the confluence of the Tamunak'le we were informed that the fly called tsetse* abounded on its banks. This was a barrier we never expected to meet; and, as it might have brought our wagons to a complete stand-still in a wilderness, where no supplies for the children could be obtained, we were reluctantly compelled to recross the Zouga.

* 'Glossina morsitans', the first specimens of which were brought to England in 1848 by my friend Major Vardon, from the banks of the Limpopo.

From the Bayeiye we learned that a party of Englishmen, who had come to the lake in search of ivory, were all laid low by fever, so we traveled hastily down about sixty miles to render what aid was in our power. We were grieved to find, as we came near, that Mr. Alfred Rider, an enterprising young artist who had come to make sketches of this country and of the lake immediately after its discovery, had died of fever before our arrival; but by the aid of medicines and such comforts as could be made by the only English lady who ever visited the lake, the others happily recovered. The unfinished drawing of Lake Ngami was made by Mr. Rider just before his death, and has been kindly lent for this work by his bereaved mother.

Sechele used all his powers of eloquence with Lechulatebe to induce him to furnish guides that I might be able to visit Sebituane on ox-back, while Mrs. Livingstone and the children remained at Lake Ngami. He yielded at last. I had a very superior London-made gun, the gift of Lieutenant Arkwright, on which I placed the greatest value, both on account of the donor and the impossibility of my replacing it. Lechulatebe fell violently in love with it, and offered whatever number of elephants' tusks I might ask for it. I too was enamored with Sebituane; and as he promised in addition that he would furnish Mrs. Livingstone with meat all the time of my absence, his arguments made me part with the gun. Though he had no ivory at the time to pay me, I felt the piece would be well spent on those terms, and delivered it to him. All being ready for our departure, I took Mrs. Livingstone about six miles from the town, that she might have a peep at the broad part of the lake. Next morning we had other work to do than part, for our little boy and girl were seized with fever. On the day following, all our servants were down too with the same complaint. As nothing is better in these cases than change of place, I was forced to give up the hope of seeing Sebituane that year; so, leaving my gun as part payment for guides next year, we started for the pure air of the Desert.

Some mistake had happened in the arrangement with Mr. Oswell, for we met him on the Zouga on our return, and he devoted the rest of this season to elephant-hunting, at which the natives universally declare he is the greatest adept that ever came into the country. He hunted without dogs. It is remarkable that this lordly animal is so completely harassed by the presence of a few yelping curs as to be quite incapable of attending to man. He makes awkward attempts to crush them by falling on his knees; and sometimes places his forehead against a tree ten inches in diameter; glancing on one side of the tree and then on the other, he pushes it down before him, as if he thought thereby to catch his enemies. The only danger the huntsman has to apprehend is the dogs running toward him, and thereby leading the elephant to their master. Mr. Oswell has been known to kill four large old male elephants a day. The value of the ivory in these cases would be one hundred guineas. We had reason to be proud of his success, for the inhabitants conceived from it a very high idea of English courage; and when they wished to flatter me would say, "If you were not a missionary you would just be like Oswell; you would not hunt with dogs either." When, in 1852, we came to the Cape, my black coat eleven years out of fashion, and without a penny of salary to draw, we found that Mr. Oswell had most generously ordered an outfit for the half-naked children, which cost about 200 Pounds, and presented it to us, saying he thought Mrs. Livingstone had a right to the game of her own preserves.

Foiled in this second attempt to reach Sebituane, we returned again to Kolobeng, whither we were soon followed by a number of messengers from that chief himself. When he heard of our attempts to visit him, he dispatched three detachments of his men with thirteen brown cows to Lechulatebe, thirteen white cows to Sekomi, and thirteen black cows to Sechele, with a request to each to assist the white men to reach him. Their policy, however, was to keep him out of view, and act as his agents in purchasing with his ivory the goods he wanted. This is thoroughly African; and that continent being without friths and arms of the sea, the tribes in the centre have always been debarred from European intercourse by its universal prevalence among all the people around the coasts.

Before setting out on our third journey to Sebituane, it was necessary to visit Kuruman; and Sechele, eager, for the sake of the commission thereon, to get the ivory of that chief into his own hands, allowed all the messengers to leave before our return. Sekomi, however, was more than usually gracious, and even furnished us with a guide, but no one knew the path beyond Nchokotsa which we intended to follow. When we reached that point, we found that the main spring of the gun of another of his men, who was well acquainted with the Bushmen, through whose country we should pass, had opportunely broken. I never undertook to mend a gun with greater zest than this; for, under promise of his guidance, we went to the north instead of westward. All the other guides were most liberally rewarded by Mr. Oswell.

We passed quickly over a hard country, which is perfectly flat. A little soil lying on calcareous tufa, over a tract of several hundreds of miles, supports a vegetation of fine sweet short grass, and mopane and baobab trees. On several parts of this we found large salt-pans, one of which, Ntwetwe, is fifteen miles broad and one hundred long. The latitude might have been taken on its horizon as well as upon the sea.

Although these curious spots seem perfectly level, all those in this direction have a gentle slope to the northeast: thither the rain-water, which sometimes covers them, gently gravitates. This, it may be recollected, is the direction of the Zouga. The salt dissolved in the water has by this means all been transferred to one pan in that direction, named Chuantsa; on it we see a cake of salt and lime an inch and a half thick. All the others have an efflorescence of lime and one of the nitrates only, and some are covered thickly with shells. These shells are identical with those of the mollusca of Lake Ngami and the Zouga. There are three varieties, spiral, univalve, and bivalve.

In every salt-pan in the country there is a spring of water on one side. I can remember no exception to this rule. The water of these springs is brackish, and contains the nitrate of soda. In one instance there are two springs, and one more saltish than the other. If this supply came from beds of rock salt the water would not be drinkable, as it generally is, and in some instances, where the salt contained in the pan in which these springs appear has been removed by human agency, no fresh deposit occurs. It is therefore probable that these deposits of salt are the remains of the very slightly brackish lakes of antiquity, large portions of which must have been dried out in the general desiccation. We see an instance in Lake Ngami, which, when low, becomes brackish, and this view seems supported by the fact that the largest quantities of salt have been found in the deepest hollows or lowest valleys, which have no outlet or outgoing gorge; and a fountain, about thirty miles south of the Bamangwato--the temperature of which is upward of 100 Deg.--while strongly impregnated with pure salt, being on a flat part of the country, is accompanied by no deposit.

When these deposits occur in a flat tufaceous country like the present, a large space is devoid of vegetation, on account of the nitrates dissolving the tufa, and keeping it in a state unfavorable to the growth of plants.

We found a great number of wells in this tufa. A place called Matlomagan-yana, or the "Links", is quite a chain of these never-failing springs. As they occasionally become full in seasons when no rain falls, and resemble somewhat in this respect the rivers we have already mentioned, it is probable they receive some water by percolation from the river system in the country beyond. Among these links we found many families of Bushmen; and, unlike those on the plains of the Kalahari, who are generally of short stature and light yellow color, these were tall, strapping fellows, of dark complexion. Heat alone does not produce blackness of skin, but heat with moisture seems to insure the deepest hue.

One of these Bushmen, named Shobo, consented to be our guide over the waste between these springs and the country of Sebituane. Shobo gave us no hope of water in less than a month. Providentially, however, we came sooner than we expected to some supplies of rain-water in a chain of pools. It is impossible to convey an idea of the dreary scene on which we entered after leaving this spot: the only vegetation was a low scrub in deep sand; not a bird or insect enlivened the landscape. It was, without exception, the most uninviting prospect I ever beheld; and, to make matters worse, our guide Shobo wandered on the second day. We coaxed him on at night, but he went to all points of the compass on the trails of elephants which had been here in the rainy season, and then would sit down in the path, and in his broken Sichuana say, "No water, all country only; Shobo sleeps; he breaks down; country only;" and then coolly curl himself up and go to sleep. The oxen were terribly fatigued and thirsty; and on the morning of the fourth day, Shobo, after professing ignorance of every thing, vanished altogether. We went on in the direction in which we last saw him, and about eleven o'clock began to see birds; then the trail of a rhinoceros. At this we unyoked the oxen, and they, apparently knowing the sign, rushed along to find the water in the River Mahabe, which comes from the Tamunak'le, and lay to the west of us. The supply of water in the wagons had been wasted by one of our servants, and by the afternoon only a small portion remained for the children. This was a bitterly anxious night; and next morning the less there was of water, the more thirsty the little rogues became. The idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. It would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe; but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt the true value.

The cattle, in rushing along to the water in the Mahabe, probably crossed a small patch of trees containing tsetse, an insect which was shortly to become a perfect pest to us. Shobo had found his way to the Bayeiye, and appeared, when we came up to the river, at the head of a party; and, as he wished to show his importance before his friends, he walked up boldly and commanded our whole cavalcade to stop, and to bring forth fire and tobacco, while he coolly sat down and smoked his pipe. It was such an inimitably natural way of showing off, that we all stopped to admire the acting, and, though he had left us previously in the lurch, we all liked Shobo, a fine specimen of that wonderful people, the Bushmen.

Next day we came to a village of Banajoa, a tribe which extends far to the eastward. They were living on the borders of a marsh in which the Mahabe terminates. They had lost their crop of corn ('Holcus sorghum'), and now subsisted almost entirely on the root called "tsitla", a kind of aroidoea, which contains a very large quantity of sweet-tasted starch. When dried, pounded into meal, and allowed to ferment, it forms a not unpleasant article of food. The women shave all the hair off their heads, and seem darker than the Bechuanas. Their huts were built on poles, and a fire is made beneath by night, in order that the smoke may drive away the mosquitoes, which abound on the Mababe and Tamunak'le more than in any other part of the country. The head man of this village, Majane, seemed a little wanting in ability, but had had wit enough to promote a younger member of the family to the office. This person, the most like the ugly negro of the tobacconists' shops I ever saw, was called Moroa Majane, or son of Majane, and proved an active guide across the River Sonta, and to the banks of the Chobe, in the country of Sebituane. We had come through another tsetse district by night, and at once passed our cattle over to the northern bank to preserve them from its ravages.

A few remarks on the Tsetse, or 'Glossina morsitans', may here be appropriate. It is not much larger than the common house-fly, and is nearly of the same brown color as the common honey-bee; the after part of the body has three or four yellow bars across it; the wings project beyond this part considerably, and it is remarkably alert, avoiding most dexterously all attempts to capture it with the hand at common temperatures; in the cool of the mornings and evenings it is less agile. Its peculiar buzz when once heard can never be forgotten by the traveler whose means of locomotion are domestic animals; for it is well known that the bite of this poisonous insect is certain death to the ox, horse, and dog. In this journey, though we were not aware of any great number having at any time lighted on our cattle, we lost forty-three fine oxen by its bite. We watched the animals carefully, and believe that not a score of flies were ever upon them.

A most remarkable feature in the bite of the tsetse is its perfect harmlessness in man and wild animals, and even calves, so long as they continue to suck the cows. We never experienced the slightest injury from them ourselves, personally, although we lived two months in their HABITAT, which was in this case as sharply defined as in many others, for the south bank of the Chobe was infested by them, and the northern bank, where our cattle were placed, only fifty yards distant, contained not a single specimen. This was the more remarkable, as we often saw natives carrying over raw meat to the opposite bank with many tsetse settled upon it.

The poison does not seem to be injected by a sting, or by ova placed beneath the skin; for, when one is allowed to feed freely on the hand, it is seen to insert the middle prong of three portions, into which the proboscis divides, somewhat deeply into the true skin; it then draws it out a little way, and it assumes a crimson color as the mandibles come into brisk operation. The previously shrunken belly swells out, and, if left undisturbed, the fly quietly departs when it is full. A slight itching irritation follows, but not more than in the bite of a mosquito. In the ox this same bite produces no more immediate effects than in man. It does not startle him as the gad-fly does; but a few days afterward the following symptoms supervene: the eye and nose begin to run, the coat stares as if the animal were cold, a swelling appears under the jaw, and sometimes at the navel; and, though the animal continues to graze, emaciation commences, accompanied with a peculiar flaccidity of the muscles, and this proceeds unchecked until, perhaps months afterward, purging comes on, and the animal, no longer able to graze, perishes in a state of extreme exhaustion. Those which are in good condition often perish soon after the bite is inflicted with staggering and blindness, as if the brain were affected by it. Sudden changes of temperature produced by falls of rain seem to hasten the progress of the complaint; but, in general, the emaciation goes on uninterruptedly for months, and, do what we will, the poor animals perish miserably.

When opened, the cellular tissue on the surface of the body beneath the skin is seen to be injected with air, as if a quantity of soap-bubbles were scattered over it, or a dishonest, awkward butcher had been trying to make it look fat. The fat is of a greenish-yellow color and of an oily consistence. All the muscles are flabby, and the heart often so soft that the fingers may be made to meet through it. The lungs and liver partake of the disease. The stomach and bowels are pale and empty, and the gall-bladder is distended with bile.

These symptoms seem to indicate what is probably the case, a poison in the blood, the germ of which enters when the proboscis is inserted to draw blood. The poison-germ, contained in a bulb at the root of the proboscis, seems capable, although very minute in quantity, of reproducing itself, for the blood after death by tsetse is very small in quantity, and scarcely stains the hands in dissection. I shall have by-and-by to mention another insect, which by the same operation produces in the human subject both vomiting and purging.

The mule, ass, and goat enjoy the same immunity from the tsetse as man and the game. Many large tribes on the Zambesi can keep no domestic animals except the goat, in consequence of the scourge existing in their country. Our children were frequently bitten, yet suffered no harm; and we saw around us numbers of zebras, buffaloes, pigs, pallahs and other antelopes, feeding quietly in the very habitat of the tsetse, yet as undisturbed by its bite as oxen are when they first receive the fatal poison. There is not so much difference in the natures of the horse and zebra, the buffalo and ox, the sheep and antelope, as to afford any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Is a man not as much a domestic animal as a dog? The curious feature in the case, that dogs perish though fed on milk, whereas the calves escape so long as they continue sucking, made us imagine that the mischief might be produced by some plant in the locality, and not by tsetse; but Major Vardon, of the Madras Army, settled that point by riding a horse up to a small hill infested by the insect without allowing him time to graze, and, though he only remained long enough to take a view of the country and catch some specimens of tsetse on the animal, in ten days afterward the horse was dead.

The well-known disgust which the tsetse shows to animal excreta, as exhibited when a village is placed in its habitat, has been observed and turned to account by some of the doctors. They mix droppings of animals, human milk, and some medicines together, and smear the animals that are about to pass through a tsetse district; but this, though it proves a preventive at the time, is not permanent. There is no cure yet known for the disease. A careless herdsman allowing a large number of cattle to wander into a tsetse district loses all except the calves; and Sebituane once lost nearly the entire cattle of his tribe, very many thousands, by unwittingly coming under its influence. Inoculation does not insure immunity, as animals which have been slightly bitten in one year may perish by a greater number of bites in the next; but it is probable that with the increase of guns the game will perish, as has happened in the south, and the tsetse, deprived of food, may become extinct simultaneously with the larger animals.

The Makololo whom we met on the Chobe were delighted to see us; and as their chief Sebituane was about twenty miles down the river, Mr. Oswell and I proceeded in canoes to his temporary residence. He had come from the Barotse town of Naliele down to Sesheke as soon as he heard of white men being in search of him, and now came one hundred miles more to bid us welcome into his country. He was upon an island, with all his principal men around him, and engaged in singing when we arrived. It was more like church music than the sing-song ee ee ee, ae ae ae, of the Bechuanas of the south, and they continued the tune for some seconds after we approached. We informed him of the difficulties we had encountered, and how glad we were that they were all at an end by at last reaching his presence. He signified his own joy, and added, "Your cattle are all bitten by the tsetse, and will certainly die; but never mind, I have oxen, and will give you as many as you need." We, in our ignorance, then thought that as so few tsetse had bitten them no great mischief would follow. He then presented us with an ox and a jar of honey as food, and handed us over to the care of Mahale, who had headed the party to Kolobeng, and would now fain appropriate to himself the whole credit of our coming. Prepared skins of oxen, as soft as cloth, were given to cover us through the night; and, as nothing could be returned to this chief, Mahale became the owner of them. Long before it was day Sebituane came, and sitting down by the fire, which was lighted for our benefit behind the hedge where we lay, he narrated the difficulties he had himself experienced, when a young man, in crossing that same desert which we had mastered long afterward. As he has been most remarkable in his career, and was unquestionably the greatest man in all that country, a short sketch of his life may prove interesting to the reader.

Sebituane was about forty-five years of age; of a tall and wiry form, an olive or coffee-and-milk color, and slightly bald; in manner cool and collected, and more frank in his answers than any other chief I ever met. He was the greatest warrior ever heard of beyond the colony; for, unlike Mosilikatse, Dingaan, and others, he always led his men into battle himself. When he saw the enemy, he felt the edge of his battle-axe, and said, "Aha! it is sharp, and whoever turns his back on the enemy will feel its edge." So fleet of foot was he, that all his people knew there was no escape for the coward, as any such would be cut down without mercy. In some instances of skulking he allowed the individual to return home; then calling him, he would say, "Ah! you prefer dying at home to dying in the field, do you? You shall have your desire." This was the signal for his immediate execution.

He came from the country near the sources of the Likwa and Namagari rivers in the south, so we met him eight hundred or nine hundred miles from his birth-place. He was not the son of a chief, though related closely to the reigning family of the Basutu; and when, in an attack by Sikonyele, the tribe was driven out of one part, Sebituane was one in that immense horde of savages driven back by the Griquas from Kuruman in 1824.* He then fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and cattle. At Melita the Bangwaketse collected the Bakwains, Bakatla, and Bahurutse, to "eat them up". Placing his men in front, and the women behind the cattle, he routed the whole of his enemies at one blow. Having thus conquered Makabe, the chief of the Bangwaketse, he took immediate possession of his town and all his goods.

* See an account of this affair in Moffat's "Missionary Enterprise in Africa".

Sebituane subsequently settled at the place called Litubaruba, where Sechele now dwells, and his people suffered severely in one of those unrecorded attacks by white men, in which murder is committed and materials laid up in the conscience for a future judgment.

A great variety of fortune followed him in the northern part of the Bechuana country; twice he lost all his cattle by the attacks of the Matabele, but always kept his people together, and retook more than he lost. He then crossed the Desert by nearly the same path that we did. He had captured a guide, and, as it was necessary to travel by night in order to reach water, the guide took advantage of this and gave him the slip. After marching till morning, and going as they thought right, they found themselves on the trail of the day before. Many of his cattle burst away from him in the phrensy of thirst, and rushed back to Serotli, then a large piece of water, and to Mashue and Lopepe, the habitations of their original owners. He stocked himself again among the Batletli, on Lake Kumadau, whose herds were of the large-horned species of cattle.* Conquering all around the lake, he heard of white men living at the west coast; and, haunted by what seems to have been the dream of his whole life, a desire to have intercourse with the white man, he passed away to the southwest, into the parts opened up lately by Messrs. Galton and Andersson. There, suffering intensely from thirst, he and his party came to a small well. He decided that the men, not the cattle, should drink it, the former being of most value, as they could fight for more should these be lost. In the morning they found the cattle had escaped to the Damaras.

* We found the Batauana in possession of this breed when we discovered Lake Ngami. One of these horns, brought to England by Major Vardon, will hold no less than twenty-one imperial pints of water; and a pair, brought by Mr. Oswell, and now in the possession of Colonel Steele, measures from tip to tip eight and a half feet.

Returning to the north poorer than he started, he ascended the Teoughe to the hill Sorila, and crossed over a swampy country to the eastward. Pursuing his course onward to the low-lying basin of the Leeambye, he saw that it presented no attraction to a pastoral tribe like his, so he moved down that river among the Bashubia and Batoka, who were then living in all their glory. His narrative resembled closely the "Commentaries of Caesar", and the history of the British in India. He was always forced to attack the different tribes, and to this day his men justify every step he took as perfectly just and right. The Batoka lived on large islands in the Leeambye or Zambesi, and, feeling perfectly secure in their fastnesses, often allured fugitive or wandering tribes on to uninhabited islets on pretense of ferrying them across, and there left them to perish for the sake of their goods. Sekomi, the chief of the Bamangwato, was, when a child, in danger of meeting this fate; but a man still living had compassion on him, and enabled his mother to escape with him by night. The river is so large that the sharpest eye can not tell the difference between an island and the bend of the opposite bank; but Sebituane, with his usual foresight, requested the island chief who ferried him across to take his seat in the canoe with him, and detained him by his side till all his people and cattle were safely landed. The whole Batoka country was then densely peopled, and they had a curious taste for ornamenting their villages with the skulls of strangers. When Sebituane appeared near the great falls, an immense army collected to make trophies of the Makololo skulls; but, instead of succeeding in this, they gave him a good excuse for conquering them, and capturing so many cattle that his people were quite incapable of taking any note of the sheep and goats. He overran all the high lands toward the Kafue, and settled in what is called a pastoral country, of gently undulating plains, covered with short grass and but little forest. The Makololo have never lost their love for this fine, healthy region.

But the Matebele, a Caffre or Zulu tribe, under Mosilikatse, crossed the Zambesi, and, attacking Sebituane in this choice spot, captured his cattle and women. Rallying his men, he followed and recaptured the whole. A fresh attack was also repulsed, and Sebituane thought of going farther down the Zambesi, to the country of the white men. He had an idea, whence imbibed I never could learn, that if he had a cannon he might live in peace. He had led a life of war, yet no one apparently desired peace more than he did. A prophet induced him to turn his face again to the westward. This man, by name Tlapane, was called a "senoga"--one who holds intercourse with the gods. He probably had a touch of insanity, for he was in the habit of retiring no one knew whither, but perhaps into some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric state until the moon was full. Then, returning to the tribe quite emaciated, he excited himself, as others do who pretend to the prophetic AFFLATUS, until he was in a state of ecstasy. These pretended prophets commence their operations by violent action of the voluntary muscles. Stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or beating the ground with a club, they induce a kind of fit, and while in it pretend that their utterances are unknown to themselves. Tlapane, pointing eastward, said, "There, Sebituane, I behold a fire: shun it; it is a fire which may scorch thee. The gods say, go not thither." Then, turning to the west, he said, "I see a city and a nation of black men--men of the water; their cattle are red; thine own tribe, Sebituane, is perishing, and will be all consumed; thou wilt govern black men, and, when thy warriors have captured red cattle, let not the owners be killed; they are thy future tribe--they are thy city; let them be spared to cause thee to build. And thou, Ramosinii, thy village will perish utterly. If Mokari removes from that village he will perish first, and thou, Ramosinii, wilt be the last to die." Concerning himself he added, "The gods have caused other men to drink water, but to me they have given bitter water of the chukuru (rhinoceros). They call me away myself. I can not stay much longer."

This vaticination, which loses much in the translation, I have given rather fully, as it shows an observant mind. The policy recommended was wise, and the deaths of the "senoga" and of the two men he had named, added to the destruction of their village, having all happened soon after, it is not wonderful that Sebituane followed implicitly the warning voice. The fire pointed to was evidently the Portuguese fire-arms, of which he must have heard. The black men referred to were the Barotse, or, as they term themselves, Baloiana; and Sebituane spared their chiefs, even though they attacked him first. He had ascended the Barotse valley, but was pursued by the Matebele, as Mosilikatse never could forgive his former defeats. They came up the river in a very large body. Sebituane placed some goats on one of the large islands of the Zambesi as a bait to the warriors, and some men in canoes to co-operate in the manoeuvre. When they were all ferried over to the island, the canoes were removed, and the Matebele found themselves completely in a trap, being perfectly unable to swim. They subsisted for some time on the roots of grass after the goats were eaten, but gradually became so emaciated that, when the Makololo landed, they had only to perform the part of executioners on the adults, and to adopt the rest into their own tribe. Afterward Mosilikatse was goaded on by his warriors to revenge this loss; so he sent an immense army, carrying canoes with them, in order that no such mishap might occur again. Sebituane had by this time incorporated the Barotse, and taught his young men to manage canoes; so he went from island to island, and watched the Matebele on the main land so closely that they could not use their canoes to cross the river any where without parting their forces. At last all the Makololo and their cattle were collected on the island of Loyelo, and lay all around, keeping watch night and day over the enemy. After some time spent in this way, Sebituane went in a canoe toward them, and, addressing them by an interpreter, asked why they wished to kill him; he had never attacked them, never harmed their chief: "Au!" he continued, "the guilt is on your side." The Matebele made no reply; but the Makololo next day saw the canoes they had carried so far lying smashed, and the owners gone. They returned toward their own country, and fever, famine, and the Batoka completed their destruction; only five men returned to Mosilikatse.

Sebituane had now not only conquered all the black tribes over an immense tract of country, but had made himself dreaded even by the terrible Mosilikatse. He never could trust this ferocious chief, however; and, as the Batoka on the islands had been guilty of ferrying his enemies across the Zambesi, he made a rapid descent upon them, and swept them all out of their island fastnesses. He thus unwittingly performed a good service to the country by completely breaking down the old system which prevented trade from penetrating into the great central valley. Of the chiefs who escaped, he said, "They love Mosilikatse, let them live with him: the Zambesi is my line of defense;" and men were placed all along it as sentinels. When he heard of our wish to visit him, he did all he could to assist our approach. Sechele, Sekomi, and Lechulatebe owed their lives to his clemency; and the latter might have paid dearly for his obstructiveness. Sebituane knew every thing that happened in the country, for he had the art of gaining the affections both of his own people and of strangers. When a party of poor men came to his town to sell their hoes or skins, no matter how ungainly they might be, he soon knew them all. A company of these indigent strangers, sitting far apart from the Makololo gentlemen around the chief, would be surprised to see him come alone to them, and, sitting down, inquire if they were hungry. He would order an attendant to bring meal, milk, and honey, and, mixing them in their sight, in order to remove any suspicion from their minds, make them feast, perhaps for the first time in their lives, on a lordly dish. Delighted beyond measure with his affability and liberality, they felt their hearts warm toward him, and gave him all the information in their power; and as he never allowed a party of strangers to go away without giving every one of them, servants and all, a present, his praises were sounded far and wide. "He has a heart! he is wise!" were the usual expressions we heard before we saw him.

He was much pleased with the proof of confidence we had shown in bringing our children, and promised to take us to see his country, so that we might choose a part in which to locate ourselves. Our plan was, that I should remain in the pursuit of my objects as a missionary, while Mr. Oswell explored the Zambesi to the east. Poor Sebituane, however, just after realizing what he had so long ardently desired, fell sick of inflammation of the lungs, which originated in and extended from an old wound got at Melita. I saw his danger, but, being a stranger, I feared to treat him medically, lest, in the event of his death, I should be blamed by his people. I mentioned this to one of his doctors, who said, "Your fear is prudent and wise; this people would blame you." He had been cured of this complaint, during the year before, by the Barotse making a large number of free incisions in the chest. The Makololo doctors, on the other hand, now scarcely cut the skin. On the Sunday afternoon in which he died, when our usual religious service was over, I visited him with my little boy Robert. "Come near," said Sebituane, "and see if I am any longer a man. I am done." He was thus sensible of the dangerous nature of his disease, so I ventured to assent, and added a single sentence regarding hope after death. "Why do you speak of death?" said one of a relay of fresh doctors; "Sebituane will never die." If I had persisted, the impression would have been produced that by speaking about it I wished him to die. After sitting with him some time, and commending him to the mercy of God, I rose to depart, when the dying chieftain, raising himself up a little from his prone position, called a servant, and said, "Take Robert to Maunku (one of his wives), and tell her to give him some milk." These were the last words of Sebituane.

We were not informed of his death until the next day. The burial of a Bechuana chief takes place in his cattle-pen, and all the cattle are driven for an hour or two around and over the grave, so that it may be quite obliterated. We went and spoke to the people, advising them to keep together and support the heir. They took this kindly; and in turn told us not to be alarmed, for they would not think of ascribing the death of their chief to us; that Sebituane had just gone the way of his fathers; and though the father had gone, he had left children, and they hoped that we would be as friendly to his children as we intended to have been to himself.

He was decidedly the best specimen of a native chief I ever met. I never felt so much grieved by the loss of a black man before; and it was impossible not to follow him in thought into the world of which he had just heard before he was called away, and to realize somewhat of the feelings of those who pray for the dead. The deep, dark question of what is to become of such as he, must, however, be left where we find it, believing that, assuredly, the "Judge of all the earth will do right."

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, and come long distances to the Zouga, and other rivers and pools, in search of it. We have another dangerous serpent, the puff adder, and several vipers. One, named by the inhabitants "Noga-put-sane", or serpent of a kid, utters a cry by night exactly like the bleating of that animal. I heard one at a spot where no kid could possibly have been. It is supposed by the natives to lure travelers to itself by this bleating. Several varieties, when alarmed, emit a peculiar odor, by which the people become aware of their presence in a house. We have also the cobra ('Naia haje', Smith) of several colors or varieties. When annoyed, they raise their heads up about a foot from the ground, and flatten the neck in a threatening manner, darting out the tongue and retracting it with great velocity, while their fixed glassy eyes glare as if in anger. There are also various species of the genus 'Dendrophis', as the 'Bucephalus viridis', or green tree-climber. They climb trees in search of birds and eggs, and are soon discovered by all the birds in the neighborhood collecting and sounding an alarm.* Their fangs are formed not so much for injecting poison on external objects as for keeping in any animal or bird of which they have got hold. In the case of the 'Dasypeltis inornatus' (Smith), the teeth are small, and favorable for the passage of thin-shelled eggs without breaking. The egg is taken in unbroken till it is within the gullet, or about two inches behind the head. The gular teeth placed there break the shell without spilling the contents, as would be the case if the front teeth were large. The shell is then ejected. Others appear to be harmless, and even edible. Of the latter sort is the large python, metse pallah, or tari. The largest specimens of this are about 15 or 20 feet in length. They are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; occasionally the steinbuck and pallah fall victims, and are sucked into its comparatively small mouth in boa-constrictor fashion. One we shot was 11 feet 10 inches long, and as thick as a man's leg. When shot through the spine, it was capable of lifting itself up about five feet high, and opened its mouth in a threatening manner, but the poor thing was more inclined to crawl away. The flesh is much relished by the Bakalahari and Bushmen. They carry away each his portion, like logs of wood, over their shoulders.

* "As this snake, 'Bucephalus Capensis', in our opinion, is not provided with a poisonous fluid to instill into wounds which these fangs may inflict, they must consequently be intended for a purpose different to those which exist in poisonous reptiles. Their use seems to be to offer obstacles to the retrogression of animals, such as birds, etc., while they are only partially within the mouth; and from the circumstance of these fangs being directed backward, and not admitting of being raised so as to form an angle with the edge of the jaw, they are well fitted to act as powerful holders when once they penetrate the skin and soft parts of the prey which their possessors may be in the act of swallowing. Without such fangs escapes would be common; with such they are rare.

"The natives of South Africa regard the 'Bucephalus Capensis' as poisonous; but in their opinion we can not concur, as we have not been able to discover the existence of any glands manifestly organized for the secretion of poison. The fangs are inclosed in a soft, pulpy sheath, the inner surface of which is commonly coated with a thin glairy secretion. This secretion possibly may have something acrid and irritating in its qualities, which may, when it enters a wound, cause pain and even swelling, but nothing of greater importance.

"The 'Bucephalus Capensis' is generally found on trees, to which it resorts for the purpose of catching birds, upon which it delights to feed. The presence of a specimen in a tree is generally soon discovered by the birds of the neighborhood, who collect around it and fly to and fro, uttering the most piercing cries, until some one, more terror-struck than the rest, actually scans its lips, and, almost without resistance, becomes a meal for its enemy. During such a proceeding the snake is generally observed with its head raised about ten or twelve inches above the branch round which its body and tail are entwined, with its mouth open and its neck inflated, as if anxiously endeavoring to increase the terror which it would almost appear it was aware would sooner or later bring within its grasp some one of the feathered group.

"Whatever may be said in ridicule of fascination, it is nevertheless true that birds, and even quadrupeds, are, under certain circumstances, unable to retire from the presence of certain of their enemies; and, what is even more extraordinary, unable to resist the propensity to advance from a situation of actual safety into one of the most imminent danger. This I have often seen exemplified in the case of birds and snakes; and I have heard of instances equally curious, in which antelopes and other quadrupeds have been so bewildered by the sudden appearance of crocodiles, and by the grimaces and contortions they practiced, as to be unable to fly or even move from the spot toward which they were approaching to seize them."--Dr. Andrew Smith's "Reptilia".

In addition to these interesting statements of the most able naturalist from whom I have taken this note, it may be added that fire exercises a fascinating effect on some kinds of toads. They may be seen rushing into it in the evenings without ever starting back on feeling pain. Contact with the hot embers rather increases the energy with which they strive to gain the hottest parts, and they never cease their struggles for the centre even when their juices are coagulating and their limbs stiffening in the roasting heat. Various insects, also, are thus fascinated; but the scorpions may be seen coming away from the fire in fierce disgust, and they are so irritated as to inflict at that time their most painful stings.

Some of the Bayeiye we met at Sebituane's Ford pretended to be unaffected by the bite of serpents, and showed the feat of lacerating their arms with the teeth of such as are unfurnished with the poison-fangs. They also swallow the poison, by way of gaining notoriety; but Dr. Andrew Smith put the sincerity of such persons to the test by offering them the fangs of a really poisonous variety, and found they shrank from the experiment.

When we reached the Bamangwato, the chief, Sekomi, was particularly friendly, collected all his people to the religious services we held, and explained his reasons for compelling some Englishmen to pay him a horse. "They would not sell him any powder, though they had plenty; so he compelled them to give it and the horse for nothing. He would not deny the extortion to me; that would be 'boherehere' (swindling)." He thus thought extortion better than swindling. I could not detect any difference in the morality of the two transactions, but Sekomi's ideas of honesty are the lowest I have met with in any Bechuana chief, and this instance is mentioned as the only approach to demanding payment for leave to pass that I have met with in the south. In all other cases the difficulty has been to get a chief to give us men to show the way, and the payment has only been for guides. Englishmen have always very properly avoided giving that idea to the native mind which we shall hereafter find prove troublesome, that payment ought to be made for passage through a country.

All the Bechuana and Caffre tribes south of the Zambesi practice circumcision ('boguera'), but the rites observed are carefully concealed. The initiated alone can approach, but in this town I was once a spectator of the second part of the ceremony of the circumcision, called "sechu". Just at the dawn of day, a row of boys of nearly fourteen years of age stood naked in the kotla, each having a pair of sandals as a shield on his hands. Facing them stood the men of the town in a similar state of nudity, all armed with long thin wands, of a tough, strong, supple bush called moretloa ('Grewia flava'), and engaged in a dance named "koha", in which questions are put to the boys, as "Will you guard the chief well?" "Will you herd the cattle well?" and, while the latter give an affirmative response, the men rush forward to them, and each aims a full-weight blow at the back of one of the boys. Shielding himself with the sandals above his head, he causes the supple wand to descend and bend into his back, and every stroke inflicted thus makes the blood squirt out of a wound a foot or eighteen inches long. At the end of the dance, the boys' backs are seamed with wounds and weals, the scars of which remain through life. This is intended to harden the young soldiers, and prepare them for the rank of men. After this ceremony, and after killing a rhinoceros, they may marry a wife.

In the "koha" the same respect is shown to age as in many other of their customs. A younger man, rushing from the ranks to exercise his wand on the backs of the youths, may be himself the object of chastisement by the older, and, on the occasion referred to, Sekomi received a severe cut on the leg from one of his gray-haired people. On my joking with some of the young men on their want of courage, notwithstanding all the beatings of which they bore marks, and hinting that our soldiers were brave without suffering so much, one rose up and said, "Ask him if, when he and I were compelled by a lion to stop and make a fire, I did not lie down and sleep as well as himself." In other parts a challenge to try a race would have been given, and you may frequently see grown men adopting that means of testing superiority, like so many children.

The sechu is practiced by three tribes only. Boguera is observed by all the Bechuanas and Caffres, but not by the negro tribes beyond 20 Deg. south. The "boguera" is a civil rather than a religious rite. All the boys of an age between ten and fourteen or fifteen are selected to be the companions for life of one of the sons of the chief. They are taken out to some retired spot in the forest, and huts are erected for their accommodation; the old men go out and teach them to dance, initiating them, at the same time, into all the mysteries of African politics and government. Each one is expected to compose an oration in praise of himself, called a "leina" or name, and to be able to repeat it with sufficient fluency. A good deal of beating is required to bring them up to the required excellency in different matters, so that, when they return from the close seclusion in which they are kept, they have generally a number of scars to show on their backs. These bands or regiments, named mepato in the plural and mopato in the singular, receive particular appellations; as, the Matsatsi--the suns; the Mabusa--the rulers; equivalent to our Coldstreams or Enniskillens; and, though living in different parts of the town, they turn out at the call, and act under the chief's son as their commander. They recognize a sort of equality and partial communism ever afterward, and address each other by the title of molekane or comrade. In cases of offence against their rules, as eating alone when any of their comrades are within call, or in cases of cowardice or dereliction of duty, they may strike one another, or any member of a younger mopato, but never any one of an older band; and when three or four companies have been made, the oldest no longer takes the field in time of war, but remains as a guard over the women and children. When a fugitive comes to a tribe, he is directed to the mopato analogous to that to which in his own tribe he belongs, and does duty as a member. No one of the natives knows how old he is. If asked his age, he answers by putting another question, "Does a man remember when he was born?" Age is reckoned by the number of mepato they have seen pass through the formulae of admission. When they see four or five mepato younger than themselves, they are no longer obliged to bear arms. The oldest individual I ever met boasted he had seen eleven sets of boys submit to the boguera. Supposing him to have been fifteen when he saw his own, and fresh bands were added every six or seven years, he must have been about forty when he saw the fifth, and may have attained seventy-five or eighty years, which is no great age; but it seemed so to them, for he had now doubled the age for superannuation among them. It is an ingenious plan for attaching the members of the tribe to the chief's family, and for imparting a discipline which renders the tribe easy of command. On their return to the town from attendance on the ceremonies of initiation, a prize is given to the lad who can run fastest, the article being placed where all may see the winner run up to snatch it. They are then considered men (banona, viri), and can sit among the elders in the kotla. Formerly they were only boys (basimane, pueri). The first missionaries set their faces against the boguera, on account of its connection with heathenism, and the fact that the youths learned much evil, and became disobedient to their parents. From the general success of these men, it is perhaps better that younger missionaries should tread in their footsteps; for so much evil may result from breaking down the authority on which, to those who can not read, the whole system of our influence appears to rest, that innovators ought to be made to propose their new measures as the Locrians did new laws--with ropes around their necks.

Probably the "boguera" was only a sanitary and political measure; and there being no continuous chain of tribes practicing the rite between the Arabs and the Bechuanas, or Caffres, and as it is not a religious ceremony, it can scarcely be traced, as is often done, to a Mohammedan source.

A somewhat analogous ceremony (boyale) takes place for young women, and the protegees appear abroad drilled under the surveillance of an old lady to the carrying of water. They are clad during the whole time in a dress composed of ropes made of alternate pumpkin-seeds and bits of reed strung together, and wound round the body in a figure-of-eight fashion. They are inured in this way to bear fatigue, and carry large pots of water under the guidance of the stern old hag. They have often scars from bits of burning charcoal having been applied to the forearm, which must have been done to test their power of bearing pain.

The Bamangwato hills are part of the range called Bakaa. The Bakaa tribe, however, removed to Kolobeng, and is now joined to that of Sechele. The range stands about 700 or 800 feet above the plains, and is composed of great masses of black basalt. It is probably part of the latest series of volcanic rocks in South Africa. At the eastern end these hills have curious fungoid or cup-shaped hollows, of a size which suggests the idea of craters. Within these are masses of the rock crystallized in the columnar form of this formation. The tops of the columns are quite distinct, of the hexagonal form, like the bottom of the cells of a honeycomb, but they are not parted from each other as in the Cave of Fingal. In many parts the lava-streams may be recognized, for there the rock is rent and split in every direction, but no soil is yet found in the interstices. When we were sitting in the evening, after a hot day, it was quite common to hear these masses of basalt split and fall among each other with the peculiar ringing sound which makes people believe that this rock contains much iron. Several large masses, in splitting thus by the cold acting suddenly on parts expanded by the heat of the day, have slipped down the sides of the hills, and, impinging against each other, have formed cavities in which the Bakaa took refuge against their enemies. The numerous chinks and crannies left by these huge fragments made it quite impossible for their enemies to smoke them out, as was done by the Boers to the people of Mankopane.

This mass of basalt, about six miles long, has tilted up the rocks on both the east and west; these upheaved rocks are the ancient silurian schists which formed the bottom of the great primaeval valley, and, like all the recent volcanic rocks of this country, have a hot fountain in their vicinity, namely, that of Serinane.

In passing through these hills on our way north we enter a pass named Manakalongwe, or Unicorn's Pass. The unicorn here is a large edible caterpillar, with an erect, horn-like tail. The pass was also called Porapora (or gurgling of water), from a stream having run through it. The scene must have been very different in former times from what it is now. This is part of the River Mahalapi, which so-called river scarcely merits the name, any more than the meadows of Edinburgh deserve the title of North Loch. These hills are the last we shall see for months. The country beyond consisted of large patches of trap-covered tufa, having little soil or vegetation except tufts of grass and wait-a-bit thorns, in the midst of extensive sandy, grass-covered plains. These yellow-colored, grassy plains, with moretloa and mahatla bushes, form quite a characteristic feature of the country. The yellow or dun-color prevails during a great part of the year. The Bakwain hills are an exception to the usual flat surface, for they are covered with green trees to their tops, and the valleys are often of the most lovely green. The trees are larger too, and even the plains of the Bakwain country contain trees instead of bushes. If you look north from the hills we are now leaving, the country partakes of this latter character. It appears as if it were a flat covered with a forest of ordinary-sized trees from 20 to 30 feet high, but when you travel over it they are not so closely planted but that a wagon with care may be guided among them. The grass grows in tufts of the size of one's hat, with bare soft sand between. Nowhere here have we an approach to English lawns, or the pleasing appearance of English greensward.

In no part of this country could European grain be cultivated without irrigation. The natives all cultivate the dourrha or holcus sorghum, maize, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, and different kinds of beans; and they are entirely dependent for the growth of these on rains. Their instrument of culture is the hoe, and the chief labor falls on the female portion of the community. In this respect the Bechuanas closely resemble the Caffres. The men engage in hunting, milk the cows, and have the entire control of the cattle; they prepare the skins, make the clothing, and in many respects may be considered a nation of tailors.

When at Sekomi's we generally have heard his praises sounded by a man who rises at break of day, and utters at the top of his voice the oration which that ruler is said to have composed at his boguera. This repetition of his "leina", or oration, is so pleasing to a chief, that he generally sends a handsome present to the man who does it.

JANUARY 28TH. Passing on to Letloche, about twenty miles beyond the Bamangwato, we found a fine supply of water. This is a point of so much interest in that country that the first question we ask of passers by is, "Have you had water?" the first inquiry a native puts to a fellow-countryman is, "Where is the rain?" and, though they are by no means an untruthful nation, the answer generally is, "I don't know--there is none--we are killed with hunger and by the sun." If news is asked for, they commence with, "There is no news: I heard some lies only," and then tell all they know.

This spot was Mr. Gordon Cumming's furthest station north. Our house at Kolobeng having been quite in the hunting-country, rhinoceros and buffaloes several times rushed past, and I was able to shoot the latter twice from our own door. We were favored by visits from this famous hunter during each of the five years of his warfare with wild animals. Many English gentlemen following the same pursuits paid their guides and assistants so punctually that in making arrangements for them we had to be careful that four did not go where two only were wanted: they knew so well that an Englishman would pay that they depended implicitly on his word of honor, and not only would they go and hunt for five or six months in the north, enduring all the hardships of that trying mode of life, with little else but meat of game to subsist on, but they willingly went seven hundred or eight hundred miles to Graham's Town, receiving for wages only a musket worth fifteen shillings.

No one ever deceived them except one man; and as I believed that he was afflicted with a slight degree of the insanity of greediness, I upheld the honor of the English name by paying his debts. As the guides of Mr. Cumming were furnished through my influence, and usually got some strict charges as to their behavior before parting, looking upon me in the light of a father, they always came to give me an account of their service, and told most of those hunting adventures which have since been given to the world, before we had the pleasure of hearing our friend relate them himself by our own fireside. I had thus a tolerably good opportunity of testing their accuracy, and I have no hesitation in saying that for those who love that sort of thing Mr. Cumming's book conveys a truthful idea of South African hunting. Some things in it require explanation, but the numbers of animals said to have been met with and killed are by no means improbable, considering the amount of large game then in the country. Two other gentlemen hunting in the same region destroyed in one season no fewer than seventy-eight rhinoceroses alone. Sportsmen, however, would not now find an equal number, for as guns are introduced among the tribes all these fine animals melt away like snow in spring. In the more remote districts, where fire-arms have not yet been introduced, with the single exception of the rhinoceros, the game is to be found in numbers much greater than Mr. Cumming ever saw. The tsetse is, however, an insuperable barrier to hunting with horses there, and Europeans can do nothing on foot. The step of the elephant when charging the hunter, though apparently not quick, is so long that the pace equals the speed of a good horse at a canter. A young sportsman, no matter how great among pheasants, foxes, and hounds, would do well to pause before resolving to brave fever for the excitement of risking such a terrific charge; the scream or trumpeting of this enormous brute when infuriated is more like what the shriek of a French steam-whistle would be to a man standing on the dangerous part of a rail-road than any other earthly sound: a horse unused to it will sometimes stand shivering instead of taking his rider out of danger. It has happened often that the poor animal's legs do their duty so badly that he falls and causes his rider to be trodden into a mummy; or, losing his presence of mind, the rider may allow the horse to dash under a tree and crack his cranium against a branch. As one charge from an elephant has made embryo Nimrods bid a final adieu to the chase, incipient Gordon Cummings might try their nerves by standing on railways till the engines were within a few yards of them. Hunting elephants on foot would be not less dangerous,* unless the Ceylon mode of killing them by one shot could be followed: it has never been tried in Africa.

* Since writing the above statement, it has received confirmation in the reported death of Mr. Wahlberg while hunting elephants on foot at Lake Ngami.

Advancing to some wells beyond Letloche, at a spot named Kanne, we found them carefully hedged round by the people of a Bakalahari village situated near the spot. We had then sixty miles of country in front without water, and very distressing for the oxen, as it is generally deep soft sand. There is one sucking-place, around which were congregated great numbers of Bushwomen with their egg-shells and reeds. Mathuluane now contained no water, and Motlatsa only a small supply, so we sent the oxen across the country to the deep well Nkauane, and half were lost on the way. When found at last they had been five whole days without water. Very large numbers of elands were met with as usual, though they seldom can get a sip of drink. Many of the plains here have large expanses of grass without trees, but you seldom see a treeless horizon. The ostrich is generally seen quietly feeding on some spot where no one can approach him without being detected by his wary eye. As the wagon moves along far to the windward he thinks it is intending to circumvent him, so he rushes up a mile or so from the leeward, and so near to the front oxen that one sometimes gets a shot at the silly bird. When he begins to run all the game in sight follow his example. I have seen this folly taken advantage of when he was feeding quietly in a valley open at both ends. A number of men would commence running, as if to cut off his retreat from the end through which the wind came; and although he had the whole country hundreds of miles before him by going to the other end, on he madly rushed to get past the men, and so was speared. He never swerves from the course he once adopts, but only increases his speed.

When the ostrich is feeding his pace is from twenty to twenty-two inches; when walking, but not feeding, it is twenty-six inches; and when terrified, as in the case noticed, it is from eleven and a half to thirteen and even fourteen feet in length. Only in one case was I at all satisfied of being able to count the rate of speed by a stop-watch, and, if I am not mistaken, there were thirty in ten seconds; generally one's eye can no more follow the legs than it can the spokes of a carriage-wheel in rapid motion. If we take the above number, and twelve feet stride as the average pace, we have a speed of twenty-six miles an hour. It can not be very much above that, and is therefore slower than a railway locomotive. They are sometimes shot by the horseman making a cross cut to their undeviating course, but few Englishmen ever succeed in killing them.

The ostrich begins to lay her eggs before she has fixed on a spot for a nest, which is only a hollow a few inches deep in the sand, and about a yard in diameter. Solitary eggs, named by the Bechuanas "lesetla", are thus found lying forsaken all over the country, and become a prey to the jackal. She seems averse to risking a spot for a nest, and often lays her eggs in that of another ostrich, so that as many as forty-five have been found in one nest. Some eggs contain small concretions of the matter which forms the shell, as occurs also in the egg of the common fowl: this has given rise to the idea of stones in the eggs. Both male and female assist in the incubations; but the numbers of females being always greatest, it is probable that cases occur in which the females have the entire charge. Several eggs lie out of the nest, and are thought to be intended as food for the first of the newly-hatched brood till the rest come out and enable the whole to start in quest of food. I have several times seen newly-hatched young in charge of the cock, who made a very good attempt at appearing lame in the plover fashion, in order to draw off the attention of pursuers. The young squat down and remain immovable when too small to run far, but attain a wonderful degree of speed when about the size of common fowls. It can not be asserted that ostriches are polygamous, though they often appear to be so. When caught they are easily tamed, but are of no use in their domesticated state.

The egg is possessed of very great vital power. One kept in a room during more than three months, in a temperature about 60 Deg., when broken was found to have a partially-developed live chick in it. The Bushmen carefully avoid touching the eggs, or leaving marks of human feet near them, when they find a nest. They go up the wind to the spot, and with a long stick remove some of them occasionally, and, by preventing any suspicion, keep the hen laying on for months, as we do with fowls. The eggs have a strong, disagreeable flavor, which only the keen appetite of the Desert can reconcile one to. The Hottentots use their trowsers to carry home the twenty or twenty-five eggs usually found in a nest; and it has happened that an Englishman, intending to imitate this knowing dodge, comes to the wagons with blistered legs, and, after great toil, finds all the eggs uneatable, from having been some time sat upon. Our countrymen invariably do best when they continue to think, speak, and act in their own proper character.

The food of the ostrich consists of pods and seeds of different kinds of leguminous plants, with leaves of various plants; and, as these are often hard and dry, he picks up a great quantity of pebbles, many of which are as large as marbles. He picks up also some small bulbs, and occasionally a wild melon to afford moisture, for one was found with a melon which had choked him by sticking in his throat. It requires the utmost address of the Bushmen, crawling for miles on their stomachs, to stalk them successfully; yet the quantity of feathers collected annually shows that the numbers slain must be considerable, as each bird has only a few in the wings and tail. The male bird is of a jet black glossy color, with the single exception of the white feathers, which are objects of trade. Nothing can be finer than the adaptation of those flossy feathers for the climate of the Kalahari, where these birds abound; for they afford a perfect shade to the body, with free ventilation beneath them. The hen ostrich is of a dark brownish-gray color, and so are the half-grown cocks.

The organs of vision in this bird are placed so high that he can detect an enemy at a great distance, but the lion sometimes kills him. The flesh is white and coarse, though, when in good condition, it resembles in some degree that of a tough turkey. It seeks safety in flight; but when pursued by dogs it may be seen to turn upon them and inflict a kick, which is vigorously applied, and sometimes breaks the dog's back.