I Attached Myself To The Tribe Called Bakuena Or Bakwains, The Chief Of Which,
Named Sechele, Was Then Living With His People At A Place Called Shokuane.
I Was From The First Struck By His Intelligence, And By The Marked Manner
In Which We Both Felt Drawn To Each Other.
As this remarkable man
has not only embraced Christianity, but expounds its doctrines to his people,
I will here give a brief sketch of his career.
His great-grandfather Mochoasele was a great traveler,
and the first that ever told the Bakwains of the existence of white men.
In his father's lifetime two white travelers, whom I suppose to have been
Dr. Cowan and Captain Donovan, passed through the country (in 1808),
and, descending the River Limpopo, were, with their party,
all cut off by fever. The rain-makers there, fearing lest their wagons
might drive away the rain, ordered them to be thrown into the river.
This is the true account of the end of that expedition,
as related to me by the son of the chief at whose village they perished.
He remembered, when a boy, eating part of one of the horses,
and said it tasted like zebra's flesh. Thus they were not killed
by the Bangwaketse, as reported, for they passed the Bakwains all well.
The Bakwains were then rich in cattle; and as one of the many evidences
of the desiccation of the country, streams are pointed out
where thousands and thousands of cattle formerly drank,
but in which water now never flows, and where a single herd
could not find fluid for its support.
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