The Usurper Was Put To Death;
And Sechele, Reinstated In His Chieftainship, Felt Much Attached To Sebituane.
The Circumstances Here Noticed Ultimately Led Me, As Will Be Seen By-And-By,
Into The New, Well-Watered Country To Which This Same Sebituane
Had Preceded Me By Many Years.
Sechele married the daughters of three of his under-chiefs, who had,
on account of their blood relationship, stood
By him in his adversity.
This is one of the modes adopted for cementing the allegiance of a tribe.
The government is patriarchal, each man being, by virtue of paternity,
chief of his own children. They build their huts around his,
and the greater the number of children, the more his importance increases.
Hence children are esteemed one of the greatest blessings,
and are always treated kindly. Near the centre of each circle of huts
there is a spot called a "kotla", with a fireplace; here they work, eat,
or sit and gossip over the news of the day. A poor man attaches himself
to the kotla of a rich one, and is considered a child of the latter.
An under-chief has a number of these circles around his;
and the collection of kotlas around the great one in the middle of the whole,
that of the principal chief, constitutes the town. The circle of huts
immediately around the kotla of the chief is composed of
the huts of his wives and those of his blood relations.
He attaches the under-chiefs to himself and his government by marrying,
as Sechele did, their daughters, or inducing his brothers to do so.
They are fond of the relationship to great families.
If you meet a party of strangers, and the head man's relationship
to some uncle of a certain chief is not at once proclaimed by his attendants,
you may hear him whispering, "Tell him who I am." This usually involves
a counting on the fingers of a part of his genealogical tree,
and ends in the important announcement that the head of the party
is half-cousin to some well-known ruler.
Sechele was thus seated in his chieftainship when I made his acquaintance.
On the first occasion in which I ever attempted to hold
a public religious service, he remarked that it was the custom of his nation,
when any new subject was brought before them, to put questions on it;
and he begged me to allow him to do the same in this case.
On expressing my entire willingness to answer his questions, he inquired
if my forefathers knew of a future judgment. I replied in the affirmative,
and began to describe the scene of the "great white throne,
and Him who shall sit on it, from whose face the heaven and earth
shall flee away," &c. He said, "You startle me: these words
make all my bones to shake; I have no more strength in me;
but my forefathers were living at the same time yours were, and how is it
that they did not send them word about these terrible things sooner?
They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going."
I got out of the difficulty by explaining the geographical barriers
in the North, and the gradual spread of knowledge from the South,
to which we first had access by means of ships; and I expressed
my belief that, as Christ had said, the whole world would yet be enlightened
by the Gospel. Pointing to the great Kalahari desert,
he said, "You never can cross that country to the tribes beyond;
it is utterly impossible even for us black men, except in certain seasons,
when more than the usual supply of rain falls, and an extraordinary
growth of watermelons follows. Even we who know the country
would certainly perish without them." Reasserting my belief
in the words of Christ, we parted; and it will be seen farther on
that Sechele himself assisted me in crossing that desert which had previously
proved an insurmountable barrier to so many adventurers.
As soon as he had an opportunity of learning, he set himself to read
with such close application that, from being comparatively thin,
the effect of having been fond of the chase, he became quite corpulent
from want of exercise. Mr. Oswell gave him his first lesson in figures,
and he acquired the alphabet on the first day of my residence at Chonuane.
He was by no means an ordinary specimen of the people,
for I never went into the town but I was pressed to hear him read
some chapters of the Bible. Isaiah was a great favorite with him;
and he was wont to use the same phrase nearly which the professor of Greek
at Glasgow, Sir D. K. Sandford, once used respecting the Apostle Paul,
when reading his speeches in the Acts: "He was a fine fellow, that Paul!"
"He was a fine man, that Isaiah; he knew how to speak." Sechele invariably
offered me something to eat on every occasion of my visiting him.
Seeing me anxious that his people should believe the words of Christ,
he once said, "Do you imagine these people will ever believe
by your merely talking to them? I can make them do nothing
except by thrashing them; and if you like, I shall call my head men,
and with our litupa (whips of rhinoceros hide) we will soon make them all
believe together." The idea of using entreaty and persuasion to subjects
to become Christians - whose opinion on no other matter
would he condescend to ask - was especially surprising to him.
He considered that they ought only to be too happy to embrace Christianity
at his command. During the space of two years and a half he continued
to profess to his people his full conviction of the truth of Christianity;
and in all discussions on the subject he took that side,
acting at the same time in an upright manner in all the relations of life.
He felt the difficulties of his situation long before I did,
and often said, "Oh, I wish you had come to this country
before I became entangled in the meshes of our customs!" In fact,
he could not get rid of his superfluous wives, without appearing to be
ungrateful to their parents, who had done so much for him in his adversity.
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