The Old Men Said That Every One Who Went In
Remained There Forever, Adding, "If The Teacher Is So Mad
As to kill himself,
let him do so alone, we shall not be to blame." The declaration of Sechele,
that
He would follow where I led, produced the greatest consternation.
It is curious that in all their pretended dreams or visions of their god
he has always a crooked leg, like the Egyptian Thau. Supposing that
those who were reported to have perished in this cave had fallen over
some precipice, we went well provided with lights, ladder, lines, &c.;
but it turned out to be only an open cave, with an entrance
about ten feet square, which contracts into two water-worn branches,
ending in round orifices through which the water once flowed.
The only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were baboons.
I left at the end of the upper branch one of Father Mathew's
leaden teetotal tickets.
I never saw the Bakwains looking so haggard and lean as at this time.
Most of their cattle had been swept away by the Boers,
together with about eighty fine draught oxen; and much provision
left with them by two officers, Captains Codrington and Webb,
to serve for their return journey south, had been carried off also.
On their return these officers found the skeletons of the Bakwains
where they expected to find their own goods. All the corn, clothing,
and furniture of the people, too, had been consumed in the flames
which the Boers had forced the subject tribes to apply to the town
during the fight, so that its inhabitants were now literally starving.
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