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But instead of receiving a gracious assent to my request, I was somewhat perturbed to see Moshesh himself, splendidly mounted, and attired in his new rig-out, accompanied by some ten or a dozen indunas and about a thousand of his troops, all mounted, filing out of the gate and heading straight for the wagon for, to be quite candid, the South African savage is a little uncertain in his moods, and the man who is to-day in high favour may, as likely as not, find himself staked out on an ant-heap to-morrow, to die the awful "death of the ants" in revenge for some unknown and unintended offence.
But there was no time for this; the buffalo was within a dozen yards of us, and I could see that he had singled out Moshesh as the particular object of his attack, attracted, no doubt, by His Majesty's scarlet tunic.
Hundreds of converts were received into the Christian Church, and instead of war and bloodshed prevailing, men were instructed how to cultivate fields and build houses. In the Kaffir war of 1852 Sir George Cathcart was informed that Moshesh was the centre of intrigue, and, ill-advised, he attacked that chieftain and was defeated.
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.
This has been doubted, but their songs admit the fact to this day, and they ascribe their having left off the odious practice of entrapping human prey to Moshesh having given them cattle. They are called Marimo and Mayabathu, men-eaters, by the rest of the Basuto, who have various subdivisions, as Makatla, Bamakakana, Matlapatlapa, etc.
The Bechuana hold their own in several centers; one is in Basutoland, west of Natal, where a number of tribes were welded together under the far-sighted Moshesh into a modern and fairly well civilized nation. In the north part of Bechuanaland are the self-governing Bamangwato and the Batwana, the former ruled by Khama, one of the canniest of modern rulers in Africa.
Their chief Moshesh then appealed for British intervention. The Basutos thus came under England's protection, and a peace resulted which has ever since continued, through British prestige and authority as well as good government. The Orange Free State gained a large tract of the territory conquered by that State, but had to renounce the rest.
I had by this time succeeded in recharging my rifle, and, slipping on a fresh cap, I raised the piece to my shoulder and held myself ready to shoot upon the instant that I dared do so without the risk of hitting a Basuto, for a tragedy seemed imminent. But Moshesh, who was now with difficulty restraining his own mount from bolting, stopped me.
Moshesh, the chief of the Basutos, had for a long time past been asking the Governor of Cape Colony to have him and his people placed under the direction of Great Britain. The reply from the Cape was very long delayed. Moshesh, worn out, was about to capitulate at last to the Boers.
I soon found that Moshesh, like all other savages, possessed his full share of vanity, which he was quite unable to conceal; also, it was evident that he was inordinately proud of his regiment, and was not above fishing for compliments upon it: I therefore dutifully did what was manifestly expected of me, and immensely gratified His Majesty by being as complimentary as I possibly could be without unduly straining the truth.
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