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.
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