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With a body of men like mine, composed as they were of six different tribes, and all speaking the language of the Bechuanas, there was no difficulty in communicating on common subjects with any tribe we came to; but doling out a story in which they felt no interest, and which I understood only sufficiently well to perceive that a mere abridgment was given, was uncommonly slow work.
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.
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.
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.
The Bechuanas will keep on the sick-list as long as they feel any weakness; so I at last began to be anxious that they should make a little exertion to get forward on our way.
Our Bakwain guide to the lake, Rachosi, told me that his mother lived in the country of Sebituane, but, though a good specimen of the Bechuanas, he laughed at the idea of going so far as from the Lake Ngami to the Chobe merely for the purpose of seeing her. Had he been one of the Makalaka, he never would have parted from her.
There, however, they met a tough antagonist, John Mackenzie. That devoted missionary, after long acquaintance with Boers and Bechuanas, saw how serious would be the loss to the native tribes and to the cause of civilisation if the raiders were allowed to hold the routes to the interior.
Interesting journeys have been made by the enterprising travellers, Andersson, the artist Baines, and Mr Galton, who, starting from Walvisch Bay on the West Coast to the north of Cape Colony, visited the Damaras, the Namaquas, the Bechuanas, and other tribes to the west of Lake Ngami.
True, it was not often that that was done, but there was a kind of legend among the natives that somewhere far up in the interior there was a great and very powerful tribe ruled over by a white 'nkosikaas; while within my own recollection a young girl, the daughter of a Boer farmer, had been carried off by the Bechuanas, and was in like manner said to be still living as the 'nkosikaas of the tribe.
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.
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