Sekeletu Is Always Accompanied By His Own Mopato, A Number Of Young Men
Of His Own Age.
When he sits down they crowd around him;
those who are nearest eat out of the same dish, for the Makololo chiefs
pride themselves on eating with their people.
He eats a little,
then beckons his neighbors to partake. When they have done so,
he perhaps beckons to some one at a distance to take a share; that person
starts forward, seizes the pot, and removes it to his own companions.
The comrades of Sekeletu, wishing to imitate him in riding on my old horse,
leaped on the backs of a number of half-broken Batoka oxen as they ran,
but, having neither saddle nor bridle, the number of tumbles they met with
was a source of much amusement to the rest. Troops of leches,
or, as they are here called, "lechwes", appeared feeding quite heedlessly
all over the flats; they exist here in prodigious herds,
although the numbers of them and of the "nakong" that are killed annually
must be enormous. Both are water antelopes, and, when the lands
we now tread upon are flooded, they betake themselves to the mounds
I have alluded to. The Makalaka, who are most expert
in the management of their small, thin, light canoes, come gently toward them;
the men stand upright in the canoe, though it is not more
than fifteen or eighteen inches wide and about fifteen feet long;
their paddles, ten feet in height, are of a kind of wood called molompi,
very light, yet as elastic as ash.
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