Chap mail s Travels in South Africa 205 



people of the lowest grade, living more to the west, and as yet per- 

 haps less acquainted with their power and prowess. It occurred 

 to Mr Green, the companion of Professor Wahlberg, and it was 

 fortunately successfully resisted after a regular fight and a good 

 deal of bloodshed. We have not space to copy the narrative, but 

 we recommend it to the reader's perusal, as a stirring example of 

 courage and conduct. 



The attempts at laying the whites under contribution, which the 

 natives who have seen more of them generally make, are confined 

 to stealing, cheating, tricking, and deceiving. The most serious 

 are the systematic plans to mislead, for the purpose of bringing 

 them to their own villages, or retaining them near them, that they 

 may profit by their liberality, by their traffic, or by the meat of the 

 animals which they kill. Perhaps it would be unreasonable to pass 

 a very severe judgment for this upon miserable Bushmen, who, by 

 the arrival of a party of whites, are at once removed from the direst 

 privation to the most profuse abundance, who exchange a miserable 

 subsistence on roots for plenty of the most palatable animal food. 

 But in the case of chiefs, rich in cattle, and living on the fat of a 

 land teeming with abundance, it is different. 



The inherent mendacity of the negro character is shewn in 

 strong light by the constant attempts which these chiefs made to 

 misdirect, retain, and mislead Chapman. Now he was warned not 

 to go in this direction, because Sekeletu would kill him, then not to 

 go in that direction, because Moselikatze was ravaging it; he would 

 be told that such a route was unpassable for want of water, or such 

 another from the presence of the tsetse fly — all afterwards ascer- 

 tained to be pure fabrications. Again, after receiving the most 

 friendly promises of men and oxen to help him on, the whole of his 

 men would desert him, having received private instructions, and 

 yet, with the most marvellous inconsistency, the waggons would not 

 be plundered ; nay, goods would be left deposited in the hands of 

 some of these very chiefs, to remain until his return, and would be 

 faithfully guarded and rendered up when he came back. 



Of course, there were good and bad among the chiefs, as among 

 ourselves at home. Some of them seem to have been gentlemen, 

 others low scoundrels ; but, on the whole, the impression left on 

 us by Chapman's account of the natives in the interior of South 

 Africa is rather favourable than the reverse. Perhaps the expres- 

 sion he uses in speaking of one of them, that he had "a pleasing 

 but idiotic expression of countenance," may apply to more than 



