SECHELE'S INTENDED JOUKNEY TO ENGLAND. 135 



excused myself on the ground that my arrangements were already 

 made for exploring the north. On explaining the difficulties of 

 the way, and endeavoring to dissuade him from the attempt, on 

 account of the knowledge I possessed of the governor's policy, he 

 put the pointed question, " Will the queen not listen to me, sup- 

 posing I should reach her?" I replied, "I believe she would 

 listen, hut the difficulty is to get to her." "Well, I shall reach 

 her," expressed his final determination. Others explained the 

 difficulties more fully, hut nothing could shake his resolution. 

 When he reached Bloemfontein he found the English army just 

 returning from a battle with the Basutos, in which both parties 

 claimed the victory, and both were glad that a second engage- 

 ment was not tried. Our officers invited Sechele to dine with 

 them, heard his story, and collected a handsome sum of money 

 to enable him to pursue his journey to England. The com- 

 mander refrained from noticing him, as a single word in favor 

 of the restoration of the children of Sechele would have been a 

 virtual confession of the failure of his own policy at the very out- 

 set. Sechele proceeded as far as the Cape ; but his resources be- 

 ing there expended, he was obliged to return to his own country, 

 one thousand miles distant, without accomplishing the object of 

 his journey. 



On his return he adopted a mode of punishment which he had 

 seen in the colony, namely, making criminals work on the public 

 roads. And he has since, I am informed, made himself the mis- 

 sionary to his own people. He is tall, rather corpulent, and has 

 more of the negro feature than common, but has large eyes. He 

 is very dark, and his people swear by "Black Sechele." He has 

 great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent speaker. Great num- 

 bers of the tribes formerly living under the Boers have taken ref- 

 uge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he was 

 before the attack on Kolobeng. 



Having parted with Sechele, we skirted along the Kalahari 

 Desert, and sometimes within its borders, giving the Boers a wide 

 berth. A larger fall of rain than usual had occurred in 1852, and 

 that was the completion of a cycle of eleven or twelve years, at 

 which the same phenomenon is reported to have happened on three 

 occasions. An unusually large crop of melons had appeared in 

 consequence. We had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. J. Ma- 



