They Might Be Called Stupid In Matters
Which Had Not Come Within The Sphere Of Their Observation,
But In Other Things They Showed More Intelligence Than Is To Be Met With
In Our Own Uneducated Peasantry.
They are remarkably accurate
in their knowledge of cattle, sheep, and goats, knowing exactly
the kind of pasturage suited
To each; and they select with great judgment
the varieties of soil best suited to different kinds of grain.
They are also familiar with the habits of wild animals, and in general
are well up in the maxims which embody their ideas of political wisdom.
The place where we first settled with the Bakwains is called Chonuane,
and it happened to be visited, during the first year of our residence there,
by one of those droughts which occur from time to time
in even the most favored districts of Africa.
The belief in the gift or power of RAIN-MAKING is one of the most
deeply-rooted articles of faith in this country. The chief Sechele
was himself a noted rain-doctor, and believed in it implicitly. He has often
assured me that he found it more difficult to give up his faith in that
than in any thing else which Christianity required him to abjure.
I pointed out to him that the only feasible way of watering the gardens
was to select some good, never-failing river, make a canal,
and irrigate the adjacent lands. This suggestion was immediately adopted,
and soon the whole tribe was on the move to the Kolobeng,
a stream about forty miles distant. The experiment succeeded admirably
during the first year. The Bakwains made the canal and dam
in exchange for my labor in assisting to build a square house for their chief.
They also built their own school under my superintendence.
Our house at the River Kolobeng, which gave a name to the settlement,
was the third which I had reared with my own hands. A native smith taught me
to weld iron; and having improved by scraps of information in that line
from Mr. Moffat, and also in carpentering and gardening,
I was becoming handy at almost any trade, besides doctoring and preaching;
and as my wife could make candles, soap, and clothes,
we came nearly up to what may be considered as indispensable
in the accomplishments of a missionary family in Central Africa,
namely, the husband to be a jack-of-all-trades without doors,
and the wife a maid-of-all-work within. But in our second year
again no rain fell. In the third the same extraordinary drought followed.
Indeed, not ten inches of water fell during these two years,
and the Kolobeng ran dry; so many fish were killed that the hyaenas
from the whole country round collected to the feast, and were unable to finish
the putrid masses. A large old alligator, which had never been known
to commit any depredations, was found left high and dry in the mud
among the victims. The fourth year was equally unpropitious,
the fall of rain being insufficient to bring the grain to maturity.
Nothing could be more trying. We dug down in the bed of the river
deeper and deeper as the water receded, striving to get a little
to keep the fruit-trees alive for better times, but in vain.
Needles lying out of doors for months did not rust;
and a mixture of sulphuric acid and water, used in a galvanic battery,
parted with all its water to the air, instead of imbibing more from it,
as it would have done in England. The leaves of indigenous trees
were all drooping, soft, and shriveled, though not dead;
and those of the mimosae were closed at midday, the same as they are
at night. In the midst of this dreary drought, it was wonderful to see
those tiny creatures, the ants, running about with their accustomed vivacity.
I put the bulb of a thermometer three inches under the soil,
in the sun, at midday, and found the mercury to stand at 132 Deg. to 134 Deg.;
and if certain kinds of beetles were placed on the surface,
they ran about a few seconds and expired. But this broiling heat
only augmented the activity of the long-legged black ants:
they never tire; their organs of motion seem endowed with the same power
as is ascribed by physiologists to the muscles of the human heart,
by which that part of the frame never becomes fatigued,
and which may be imparted to all our bodily organs in that higher sphere
to which we fondly hope to rise. Where do these ants get their moisture?
Our house was built on a hard ferruginous conglomerate,
in order to be out of the way of the white ant, but they came in
despite the precaution; and not only were they, in this sultry weather,
able individually to moisten soil to the consistency of mortar
for the formation of galleries, which, in their way of working,
is done by night (so that they are screened from the observation of birds
by day in passing and repassing toward any vegetable matter
they may wish to devour), but, when their inner chambers were laid open,
these were also surprisingly humid. Yet there was no dew,
and, the house being placed on a rock, they could have no subterranean passage
to the bed of the river, which ran about three hundred yards below the hill.
Can it be that they have the power of combining the oxygen and hydrogen
of their vegetable food by vital force so as to form water?*
-
* When we come to Angola, I shall describe an insect there
which distills several pints of water every night.
-
Rain, however, would not fall. The Bakwains believed that I had bound Sechele
with some magic spell, and I received deputations, in the evenings,
of the old counselors, entreating me to allow him to make only a few showers:
"The corn will die if you refuse, and we shall become scattered.
Only let him make rain this once, and we shall all, men, women, and children,
come to the school, and sing and pray as long as you please."
It was in vain to protest that I wished Sechele to act
just according to his own ideas of what was right, as he found the law
laid down in the Bible, and it was distressing to appear hard-hearted to them.
The clouds often collected promisingly over us, and rolling thunder
seemed to portend refreshing showers, but next morning the sun would rise
in a clear, cloudless sky; indeed, even these lowering appearances
were less frequent by far than days of sunshine are in London.
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