304 RAIN-MAKING. 



with the rarefied air of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat 

 gives it greater capacity for retaining all its remaining humidity, 

 and few showers can be given to the middle and western lands 

 in consequence of the increased hygrometric power. The people 

 living there, not knowing the physical reasons why they have 

 so little rain, are in the habit of sending to the mountains on 

 the east for rain-makers, in whose power of making rain they 

 have a firm belief. They say the people in these mountains 

 have plenty of rain, and therefore must possess a medicine for 

 making it. This faith in rain-making is a remarkable feature in 

 the people in the country, and they have a good deal to say in 

 favor of it. If you say you do not believe that these medicines 

 have any power upon the clouds, they reply that that is just the 

 way people talk about what they do not understand. They take 

 a bulb, pound it, and administer an infusion of it to a sheep: in 

 a short time the sheep dies in convulsions, and then they ask, 

 Has not the medicine power? I do not think our friends of 

 the homoeopathic "persuasion" have much more to say than 

 that. The common argument known to all those tribes is this 

 — " God loves you white men better than us : he made you first, 

 and did not make us pretty like you : he made us afterwards, 

 and does not love us as he loves you. He gave you clothing, 

 and horses and wagons, and guns and powder, and that Book, 

 which you are always talking about. He gave us only two 

 things — cattle and a knowledge of certain medicines by which 

 we can make rain. We do not despise the things that you have; 

 we only wish that we had them too ; we do not despise that Book 

 of yours, although we do not understand it : so you ought not 

 to despise our knowledge of rain-making, although you do not 

 understand it." You cannot convince them that they have no 

 power to make rain. As it is with the homoeopathist, so it is 

 with the rain-maker — you might argue your tongue out of joint 

 and would convince neither. 



I went into that country for the purpose of teaching the doc- 

 trines of our holy religion, and settled with the tribes on the 

 border of the Kalahari desert. These tribes were those of the 

 Bakwains, Bushmen and Bakalahari. Sechele is the chief of 

 the former. On the occasion of the first religious service held, 

 he asked me if he could put some questions on the subject of 



