Sebituane Was About Forty-Five Years Of Age; Of A Tall And Wiry Form,
An Olive Or Coffee-And-Milk Color, And Slightly Bald; In Manner
Cool And Collected, And More Frank In His Answers Than Any Other Chief
I Ever Met.
He was the greatest warrior ever heard of beyond the colony;
for, unlike Mosilikatse, Dingaan, and others, he always
led his men into battle himself.
When he saw the enemy,
he felt the edge of his battle-axe, and said, "Aha! it is sharp,
and whoever turns his back on the enemy will feel its edge."
So fleet of foot was he, that all his people knew there was no escape
for the coward, as any such would be cut down without mercy.
In some instances of skulking he allowed the individual to return home;
then calling him, he would say, "Ah! you prefer dying at home
to dying in the field, do you? You shall have your desire."
This was the signal for his immediate execution.
He came from the country near the sources of the Likwa and Namagari rivers
in the south, so we met him eight hundred or nine hundred miles
from his birth-place. He was not the son of a chief, though related closely
to the reigning family of the Basutu; and when, in an attack by Sikonyele,
the tribe was driven out of one part, Sebituane was one in that
immense horde of savages driven back by the Griquas from Kuruman in 1824.*
He then fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and cattle.
At Melita the Bangwaketse collected the Bakwains, Bakatla, and Bahurutse,
to "eat them up". Placing his men in front, and the women
behind the cattle, he routed the whole of his enemies at one blow.
Having thus conquered Makabe, the chief of the Bangwaketse,
he took immediate possession of his town and all his goods.
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