164 THE "SECHU." 



cerit y of such persons to the test by offering them the fangs of 

 a really poisonous variety, and found they shrank from the ex- 

 periment. 



When we reached the Bamangwato, the chief, Sekomi, was par- 

 ticularly friendly, collected all his people to the religious services 

 we held, and explained his reasons for compelling some English- 

 men to pay him a horse. "They would not sell him any pow- 

 der, though they had plenty ; so he compelled them to give it and 

 the horse for nothing. He would not deny the extortion to me ; 

 that would be ' boherehere' (swindling)." He thus thought ex- 

 tortion better than swindling. I could not detect any difference 

 in the morality of the two transactions, but Sekomi's ideas of 

 honesty are the lowest I have met with in any Bechuana chief, 

 and this instance is mentioned as the only approach to demand- 

 ing payment for leave to pass that I have met with in the south. 

 In all other cases the difficulty has been to get a chief to give us 

 men to show the way, and the payment has only been for guides. 

 Englishmen have always very properly avoided giving that idea 

 to the native mind which we shall hereafter find prove trouble- 

 some, that payment ought to be made for passage through a 

 country. 



All the Bechuana and Caffre tribes south of the Zambesi 

 practice circumcision (boguera), but the rites observed are care- 

 fully concealed. The initiated alone can approach, but in this 

 town I was once a spectator of the second part of the ceremony 

 of the circumcision, called "sechu." Just at the dawn of day, 

 a row of boys of nearly fourteen years of age stood naked in 

 the kotla, each having a pair of sandals as a shield on his hands. 

 Facing them stood the men of the town in a similar state of nu- 

 dity, all armed with long thin wands, of a tough, strong, supple 

 bush called moretloa (Grewia flava), and engaged in a dance 

 named " koha," in which questions are put to the boys, as " Will 

 you guard the chief well?" "Will you herd the cattle well?" 

 and, while the latter give an affirmative response, the men rush 

 forward to them, and each aims a full-weight blow at the back of 

 one of the boys. Shielding himself with the sandals above his 

 head, he causes the supple wand to descend and bend into his 

 back, and every stroke inflicted thus makes the blood squirt out 

 of a wound a foot or eighteen inches long. At the end of the 



