This Peculiar State Is Probably Produced
In All Animals Killed By The Carnivora; And If So, Is A Merciful Provision
By Our Benevolent Creator For Lessening The Pain Of Death.
Turning round
to relieve myself of the weight, as he had one paw on the back of my head,
I saw his eyes directed to Mebalwe, who was trying to shoot him
at a distance of ten or fifteen yards.
His gun, a flint one,
missed fire in both barrels; the lion immediately left me,
and, attacking Mebalwe, bit his thigh. Another man, whose life
I had saved before, after he had been tossed by a buffalo,
attempted to spear the lion while he was biting Mebalwe.
He left Mebalwe and caught this man by the shoulder, but at that moment
the bullets he had received took effect, and he fell down dead.
The whole was the work of a few moments, and must have been
his paroxysms of dying rage. In order to take out the charm from him,
the Bakatla on the following day made a huge bonfire over the carcass,
which was declared to be that of the largest lion they had ever seen.
Besides crunching the bone into splinters, he left eleven teeth wounds
on the upper part of my arm.
A wound from this animal's tooth resembles a gun-shot wound;
it is generally followed by a great deal of sloughing and discharge,
and pains are felt in the part periodically ever afterward.
I had on a tartan jacket on the occasion, and I believe
that it wiped off all the virus from the teeth that pierced the flesh,
for my two companions in this affray have both suffered
from the peculiar pains, while I have escaped with only the inconvenience
of a false joint in my limb. The man whose shoulder was wounded showed me
his wound actually burst forth afresh on the same month of the following year.
This curious point deserves the attention of inquirers.
The different Bechuana tribes are named after certain animals,
showing probably that in former times they were addicted to animal-worship
like the ancient Egyptians. The term Bakatla means "they of the monkey";
Bakuena, "they of the alligator"; Batlapi, "they of the fish": each tribe
having a superstitious dread of the animal after which it is called.
They also use the word "bina", to dance, in reference to
the custom of thus naming themselves, so that, when you wish to ascertain
what tribe they belong to, you say, "What do you dance?"
It would seem as if that had been a part of the worship of old.
A tribe never eats the animal which is its namesake,
using the term "ila", hate or dread, in reference to killing it.
We find traces of many ancient tribes in the country in individual members
of those now extinct, as the Batau, "they of the lion";
the Banoga, "they of the serpent"; though no such tribes now exist.
The use of the personal pronoun they, Ba-Ma, Wa, Va or Ova, Am-Ki, &c.,
prevails very extensively in the names of tribes in Africa.
A single individual is indicated by the terms Mo or Le.
Thus Mokwain is a single person of the Bakwain tribe,
and Lekoa is a single white man or Englishman - Makoa being Englishmen.
I attached myself to the tribe called Bakuena or Bakwains, the chief of which,
named Sechele, was then living with his people at a place called Shokuane.
I was from the first struck by his intelligence, and by the marked manner
in which we both felt drawn to each other. As this remarkable man
has not only embraced Christianity, but expounds its doctrines to his people,
I will here give a brief sketch of his career.
His great-grandfather Mochoasele was a great traveler,
and the first that ever told the Bakwains of the existence of white men.
In his father's lifetime two white travelers, whom I suppose to have been
Dr. Cowan and Captain Donovan, passed through the country (in 1808),
and, descending the River Limpopo, were, with their party,
all cut off by fever. The rain-makers there, fearing lest their wagons
might drive away the rain, ordered them to be thrown into the river.
This is the true account of the end of that expedition,
as related to me by the son of the chief at whose village they perished.
He remembered, when a boy, eating part of one of the horses,
and said it tasted like zebra's flesh. Thus they were not killed
by the Bangwaketse, as reported, for they passed the Bakwains all well.
The Bakwains were then rich in cattle; and as one of the many evidences
of the desiccation of the country, streams are pointed out
where thousands and thousands of cattle formerly drank,
but in which water now never flows, and where a single herd
could not find fluid for its support.
When Sechele was still a boy, his father, also called Mochoasele,
was murdered by his own people for taking to himself
the wives of his rich under-chiefs. The children being spared,
their friends invited Sebituane, the chief of the Makololo,
who was then in those parts, to reinstate them in the chieftainship.
Sebituane surrounded the town of the Bakwains by night;
and just as it began to dawn, his herald proclaimed in a loud voice
that he had come to revenge the death of Mochoasele. This was followed
by Sebituane's people beating loudly on their shields all round the town.
The panic was tremendous, and the rush like that from a theatre on fire,
while the Makololo used their javelins on the terrified Bakwains
with a dexterity which they alone can employ. Sebituane had given orders
to his men to spare the sons of the chief; and one of them, meeting Sechele,
put him in ward by giving him such a blow on the head with a club
as to render him insensible.
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