62 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



A short time previous to my arrival, a rumor hav- 

 ing reached Sichely that he was likely to be attacked 

 by the emigrant Boers, he suddenly resolved to secure 

 his city with a wall of stones, which he at once com- 

 menced erecting. It was now completed,, entirely sur- 

 rounding the town, with loop-holes at intervals all along 

 through which to play upon the advancing enemy with 

 the muskets which he had resolved to purchase from 

 hunters and traders like myself. 



I was duly introduced to the five queens, each, of 

 whose wigwams I visited in succession. These ladies 

 were of goodly stature and comely in their appearance ; 

 they all possessed a choice assortment of very fine ka- 

 rosses of various descriptions, and their persons were 

 adorned with a profusion of ornaments of beads and 

 brass and copper wire. Sichely professed and was be- 

 lieved by his tribe to be a skillful rain-maker, viz., one 

 having the power of creating rain when required for the 

 fields and gardens. The rain-maker's art is a regular 

 profession among the Bechuanas, and the individuals 

 who practice it are much esteemed and highly ven- 

 erated among their fellow-men. They are supposed to 

 work by supernatural agency ; and acting probably on 

 the general principle that a prophet is not without hon- 

 or save in his own country, they invariably practice 

 their arts among tribes remote from their own partic- 

 ular districts. Their birth and original place of resi- 

 dence are always involved in mystery, and they pretend 

 to have been suddenly created in some lonely cave, or 

 on the summit of a mountain,, from which they came 

 in a state of manhood without undergoing the usual 

 ordeal of birth. Some of these rain-makers attain to 

 much higher reputation than their fellow-necroman- 

 cers : an illustrious character of this description is much 



