The Boers Know From Experience That Adult Captives May As Well Be Left Alone,
For Escape Is So Easy In
A wild country that no fugitive-slave-law
can come into operation; they therefore adopt the system of seizing only
The youngest children, in order that these may forget their parents and remain
in perpetual bondage. I have seen mere infants in their houses repeatedly.
This fact was formerly denied; and the only thing which was wanting
to make the previous denial of the practice of slavery and slave-hunting
by the Transvaal Boers no longer necessary was the declaration
of their independence.
In conversation with some of my friends here I learned that Maleke,
a chief of the Bakwains, who formerly lived on the hill Litubaruba,
had been killed by the bite of a mad dog. My curiosity was strongly excited
by this statement, as rabies is so rare in this country.
I never heard of another case, and could not satisfy myself
that even this was real hydrophobia. While I was at Mabotsa,
some dogs became affected by a disease which led them to run about
in an incoherent state; but I doubt whether it was any thing
but an affection of the brain. No individual or animal got the complaint
by inoculation from the animals' teeth; and from all that I could hear,
the prevailing idea of hydrophobia not existing within the tropics
seems to be quite correct.
The diseases known among the Bakwains are remarkably few.
There is no consumption nor scrofula, and insanity and hydrocephalus are rare.
Cancer and cholera are quite unknown.
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