266 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



Next morning Seleka arrived with a considerable 

 retinue, bringing some good specimens of Bechuana 

 arms to barter for muskets and ammunition. He made 

 me a present of some Bechuana beer, and a sort of 

 fermented porridge ; this, he said, he considered as a 

 gift, but be expected that I, in return, would give him 

 some gunpowder. This is the usual style oi presents 

 in Southern Africa. 



In the afternoon I exchanged a musket for nine very- 

 handsome assagais, a battle-ax, and two shields of buf- 

 falo hide. I also exchanged some assagais for ammu- 

 nition, and obtained other articles of native manufac- 

 ture in payment for cutting the arms of two or three 

 of the nobility, and rubbing medicine into the incisi.Cis, 

 to enable them to shoot well. While performing this 

 absurd ceremony, in which the Bechuanas have un- 

 bounded faith, I held before the eyes of the initiated 

 sportsman prints of each of the game quadrupeds of the 

 country ; at the same time anointing him with the 

 medicine (which was common turpentine), and looking 

 him most seriously in the face, I said, in his own lan- 

 guage, " Slay the game well ; let the course of thy 

 bullet be through the hearts of the wild beasts, thine 

 hand and heart be strong against the lion, against the 

 great elephant, against the rhinoceros, against the buf- 

 falo," &c. 



On the 5th we marched at sunrise, and, trekking 

 steadily along, arrived on the 8th at the drift on the 

 Limpopo where, on the former occasion, I had crossed 

 the river. The game was very abundant in our course, 

 but Carey and Present were rarely successful in killing, 

 and I was obliged, at length, weak as I was, to take 

 the field, as we were sadly in want of flesh. On the 

 13th we made the banks of the Ngotwani, up which 



