1 6 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



for this timely supply of meat, for though we had 

 worked hard and ridden far and wide, we had seen 

 no game, and consequently eaten no meat, since 

 leaving Secheli's. The next day, however, Sadlier 

 fell in with a troop of hartebeests, and killed two, 

 whilst I knocked over a little duiker antelope, with 

 a very fine pair of horns. Two days and nights' 

 hard trekking through heavy, sandy country, brought 

 us to Bamangwato, then governed by Matchin. 



As Bamangwato and its present chief, Khama, 

 and his people have been fully described by recent 

 writers, I will only say that it is the largest native 

 town I have seen in South Africa. It lies at the 

 entrance of a gorge through a precipitous but not 

 very lofty range of hills. Portions of this gorge are 

 very picturesque, and in one place I was strongly 

 reminded of the Creux du Vent in the Val de 

 Travers, near the Lake of Neuchatcl. At the time 

 I first visited Bamangwato, both its ruler, Matchin, 

 and his people had a very bad name — which they 

 fully deserved — among European traders in the 

 interior. Since then things have changed for the 

 better, and in no other native town in the interior 

 of South Africa will a traveller now meet with so 

 little petty annoyance from the inhabitants, or so 

 much courtesy from the ruler — a state of things for 

 which the able teaching, both by precept and example, 

 of the hard-working and indefatigable missionaries, 

 Messrs. Hepburn and Mackenzie, must have all the 

 honour due ; indeed, of the natives I have known, 

 savage or pseudo-Christianised, the only ones for 

 whom I ever felt either admiration or respect, were 

 some young fellows I met when hunting in the 

 Mababe in 1879, and they proved to be mostly 

 the sons of some of Khama's principal men, brought 



