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Updated: June 9, 2025
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.
Every one then declared that no cannon existed there; and our friends, judging the answer by what they themselves would in the circumstances have said, were confirmed in the opinion that the Bakwains actually possessed artillery. This was in some degree beneficial to us, inasmuch as fear prevented any foray in our direction for eight years.
It was trying, after all we had done, to see our labors so little appreciated; but we had sown the good seed, and have no doubt but it will yet spring up, though we may not live to see the fruits. Leaving this sketch of the chief, I proceed to give an equally rapid one of our dealing with his people, the Bakena, or Bakwains.
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.
Those who are old enough to remember the threatened invasion of our own island may understand the effect which the constant danger of a Boerish invasion had on the minds of the Bakwains; but no others can conceive how worrying were the messages and threats from the endless self-constituted authorities of the Magaliesberg Boers; and when to all this harassing annoyance was added the scarcity produced by the drought, we could not wonder at, though we felt sorry for, their indisposition to receive instruction.
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.
A village of Bakurutse lay on the opposite bank; these live among Batletli, a tribe having a click in their language, and who were found by Sebituane to possess large herds of the great horned cattle. They seem allied to the Hottentot family. Mr. Oswell, in trying to cross the river, got his horse bogged in the swampy bank. Two Bakwains and I managed to get over by wading beside a fishing-weir.
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.
They proposed that Macora and his people should seek refuge from their enemies by retreating to the country of the Bakwains, a western branch of their own great nation, the Bechuanas, which was not far-away. In reply to this proposal, Macora said that none of those people would give them protection.
Indeed, during many months there is scarcely any dew. 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.
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