It Is Sharp,
And Whoever Turns His Back On The Enemy Will Feel Its Edge."
So Fleet Of Foot Was
He, that all his people knew there was no escape
for the coward, as any such would be cut down
Without mercy.
In some instances of skulking he allowed the individual to return home;
then calling him, he would say, "Ah! you prefer dying at home
to dying in the field, do you? You shall have your desire."
This was the signal for his immediate execution.
He came from the country near the sources of the Likwa and Namagari rivers
in the south, so we met him eight hundred or nine hundred miles
from his birth-place. He was not the son of a chief, though related closely
to the reigning family of the Basutu; and when, in an attack by Sikonyele,
the tribe was driven out of one part, Sebituane was one in that
immense horde of savages driven back by the Griquas from Kuruman in 1824.*
He then fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and cattle.
At Melita the Bangwaketse collected the Bakwains, Bakatla, and Bahurutse,
to "eat them up". Placing his men in front, and the women
behind the cattle, he routed the whole of his enemies at one blow.
Having thus conquered Makabe, the chief of the Bangwaketse,
he took immediate possession of his town and all his goods.
-
* See an account of this affair in Moffat's "Missionary Enterprise in Africa".
-
Sebituane subsequently settled at the place called Litubaruba,
where Sechele now dwells, and his people suffered severely
in one of those unrecorded attacks by white men, in which murder is committed
and materials laid up in the conscience for a future judgment.
A great variety of fortune followed him in the northern part
of the Bechuana country; twice he lost all his cattle
by the attacks of the Matabele, but always kept his people together,
and retook more than he lost. He then crossed the Desert
by nearly the same path that we did. He had captured a guide,
and, as it was necessary to travel by night in order to reach water,
the guide took advantage of this and gave him the slip.
After marching till morning, and going as they thought right,
they found themselves on the trail of the day before.
Many of his cattle burst away from him in the phrensy of thirst,
and rushed back to Serotli, then a large piece of water,
and to Mashue and Lopepe, the habitations of their original owners.
He stocked himself again among the Batletli, on Lake Kumadau,
whose herds were of the large-horned species of cattle.*
Conquering all around the lake, he heard of white men
living at the west coast; and, haunted by what seems to have been
the dream of his whole life, a desire to have intercourse with the white man,
he passed away to the southwest, into the parts opened up lately
by Messrs.
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