As We Never Had A Holiday
From January To December, And Our Sundays Were The Periods Of Our Greatest
Exertions In Teaching, I Projected An Excursion Into The Cave On A Week-Day
To See The God Of The Bakwains.
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.
Sechele had given orders to his people not to commit any act of revenge
pending his visit to the Queen of England; but some of the young men
ventured to go to meet a party of Boers returning from hunting,
and, as the Boers became terrified and ran off, they brought their wagons
to Litubaruba. This seems to have given the main body of Boers an idea
that the Bakwains meant to begin a guerrilla war upon them.
This "Caffre war" was, however, only in embryo, and not near
that stage of development in which the natives have found out
that the hide-and-seek system is the most successful.
The Boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace!
I, being present, heard the condition: "Sechele's children must be
restored to him." I never saw men so completely and unconsciously in a trap
as these four Boers were. Strong parties of armed Bakwains occupied
every pass in the hills and gorges around; and had they not promised much more
than they intended, or did perform, that day would have been their last.
The commandant Scholz had appropriated the children of Sechele
to be his own domestic slaves. I was present when one little boy,
Khari, son of Sechele, was returned to his mother; the child had been allowed
to roll into the fire, and there were three large unbound open sores
on different parts of his body. His mother and the women received him
with a flood of silent tears.
Slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places.
The Boers assert that they are the best of masters, and that,
if the English had possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have received
much worse treatment than they did: what that would have been it is difficult
to imagine. I took down the names of some scores of boys and girls,
many of whom I knew as our scholars; but I could not comfort
the weeping mothers by any hope of their ever returning from slavery.
The Bechuanas are universally much attached to children.
A little child toddling near a party of men while they are eating
is sure to get a handful of the food. This love of children may arise,
in a great measure, from the patriarchal system under which they dwell.
Every little stranger forms an increase of property to the whole community,
and is duly reported to the chief - boys being more welcome than girls.
The parents take the name of the child, and often address their children
as Ma (mother), or Ra (father). Our eldest boy being named Robert,
Mrs. Livingstone was, after his birth, always addressed as Ma-Robert,
instead of Mary, her Christian name.
I have examined several cases in which a grandmother has taken upon herself
to suckle a grandchild. Masina of Kuruman had no children
after the birth of her daughter Sina, and had no milk after Sina was weaned,
an event which usually is deferred till the child is two or three years old.
Sina married when she was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins;
Masina, after at least fifteen years' interval since she had suckled a child,
took possession of one of them, applied it to her breast, and milk flowed,
so that she was able to nurse the child entirely. Masina was at this time
at least forty years of age. I have witnessed several other cases
analogous to this. A grandmother of forty, or even less, for they
become withered at an early age, when left at home with a young child,
applies it to her own shriveled breast, and milk soon follows.
In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, the chief wife of Mahure,
who was about thirty-five years of age, the child was not entirely dependent
on the grandmother's breast, as the mother suckled it too.
I had witnessed the production of milk so frequently by the simple
application of the lips of the child, that I was not therefore surprised
when told by the Portuguese in Eastern Africa of a native doctor who,
by applying a poultice of the pounded larvae of hornets
to the breast of a woman, aided by the attempts of the child,
could bring back the milk.
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