He Employed
All His Eloquence And Powers Of Persuasion To Induce Me To Accompany Him,
But I Excused Myself On The Ground That My Arrangements Were Already Made
For Exploring The North.
On explaining the difficulties of the way,
and endeavoring to dissuade him from the attempt, on account of the
Knowledge
I possessed of the governor's policy, he put the pointed question,
"Will the queen not listen to me, supposing I should reach her?"
I replied, "I believe she would listen, but the difficulty is to get to her."
"Well, I shall reach her," expressed his final determination.
Others explained the difficulties more fully, but nothing could shake
his resolution. When he reached Bloemfontein he found the English army
just returning from a battle with the Basutos, in which both parties
claimed the victory, and both were glad that a second engagement
was not tried. Our officers invited Sechele to dine with them,
heard his story, and collected a handsome sum of money to enable him
to pursue his journey to England. The commander refrained from noticing him,
as a single word in favor of the restoration of the children of Sechele
would have been a virtual confession of the failure of his own policy
at the very outset. Sechele proceeded as far as the Cape; but his resources
being there expended, he was obliged to return to his own country,
one thousand miles distant, without accomplishing the object of his journey.
On his return he adopted a mode of punishment which he had seen in the colony,
namely, making criminals work on the public roads.
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