98 CAREER OF SEBITUANE. 



credit of our coming. Prepared skins of oxen, as soft as cloth, 

 were given to cover us through the night ; and, as nothing could 

 be returned to this chief, Mahale became the owner of them. Long 

 before it was day Sebituane came, and sitting down by the fire, 

 which was lighted for our benefit behind the hedge where we lay, 

 he narrated the difficulties he had himself experienced, when a 

 young man, in crossing that same desert which we had mastered 

 long afterward. As he has been most remarkable in his career, 

 and was unquestionably the greatest man in all that country, a 

 short sketch of his life may prove interesting to the reader. 



Sebituane was about forty-five years of age ; of a tall and wiry 

 form, an olive or coffee- and- milk color, and slightly bald; in 

 manner cool and collected, and more frank in his answers than 

 any other chief I ever met. He was the greatest warrior ever 

 heard of beyond the colony ; for, unlike Mosilikatse, Dingaan, and 

 others, he always led his men into battle himself. When he saw 

 the enemy, he felt the edge of his battle-axe, and said, "Aha! 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 in- 

 dividual 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 Ba- 

 siitu ; 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 



* See an account of this affair in Moffat's " Missionary Enterprise in Africa." 



