Chap. VI. RETALIATION ON BOERS. 125 



branches, ending in round orifices tlirough 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 

 tins time. Most of then 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 

 literally 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 re- 

 turning from hunting, and, as the Boers became terrified and ran 

 off, they brought then waggons to Litubaruba. Tins seems to 

 have given the main body of Boers an idea that the Bakwains 

 meant to begin a guerilla war upon them. This " Caffre war " 

 was, however, only in embryo, and not near that stage of deve- 

 lopment 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 in- 

 tended, or did perform, that day would have been then 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. 



