RETALIATION ON BOERS. 139 



branches, ending in round orifices through which the water once 

 flowed. The only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were 

 baboons. I left at the end of the upper branch one of Father 

 Mathew's leaden teetotal tickets. 



I never saw the Bakwains looking so haggard and lean as at 

 this time. Most of their cattle had been swept away by the Boers, 

 together with about eighty fine draught oxen ; and much provision 

 left with them by two officers, Captains Codrington and Webb, to 

 serve for their return journey south, had been carried off also. 

 On their return these officers found the skeletons of the Bakwains 

 where they expected to find their own goods. All the corn, 

 clothing, and furniture of the people, too, had been consumed in 

 the flames which the Boers had forced the subject tribes to apply 

 to the town during the fight, so that its inhabitants were now lit- 

 erally starving. 



Sechele had given orders to his people not to commit any act of 

 revenge pending his visit to the Queen of England ; but some of 

 the young men ventured to go to meet a party of Boers returning 

 from hunting, and, as the Boers became terrified and ran off, they 

 brought their wagons to Litubaruba. This seems to have given 

 the main body of Boers an idea that the Bakwains meant to begin 

 a guerrilla war upon them. This " Caffre war" was, however, only 

 in embryo, and not near that stage of development in which the 

 natives have found out that the hide-and-seek system is the most 

 successful. 



The Boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace! 

 I, being present, heard the condition: " Sechele's children must 

 be restored to him." I never saw men so completely and uncon- 

 sciously in a trap as these four Boers were. Strong parties of 

 armed Bakwains occupied every pass in the hills and gorges 

 around ; and had they not promised much more than they intend- 

 ed, or did perform, that day would have been their last. The 

 commandant Scholz had appropriated the children of Sechele to 

 be his own domestic slaves. I was present when one little boy, 

 Khari, son of Sechele, was returned to his mother ; the child had 

 been allowed to roll into the fire, and there were three large un- 

 bound open sores on different parts of his body. His mother and 

 the women received him with a flood of silent tears. 



Slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places. 



