Chap. XIV. NATIVE VIEWS ON MATRIMONY. 291 



contempt on this display of ignorance. Nearly all our men 

 had learned to repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' 

 Creed in their own language, and felt rather proud of being 

 able to do so ; and when they reached home, they liked to 

 recite them to groups of admiring friends. Their ideas of 

 right and wrong differ in no respect from our own, except 

 in their professed inability to see how it can be improper 

 for a man to have more than one wife. A year or two ago 

 several of the wives of those who had been absent with us 

 petitioned the Chief for leave to marry again. They thought 

 that it was of no use waiting any longer, their husbands must 

 be dead; but Sekeletu refused permission; he himself had 

 bet a number of oxen that the Doctor would return with 

 their husbands, and he had promised the absent men that 

 their wives should be kept for them. The impatient spouses 

 had therefore to wait a little longer. Some of them, how- 

 ever, eloped with other men ; the wife of Mantlanyane, for 

 instance, ran off and left his little boy amongst strangers. 

 Mantlanyane was very angry when he heard of it, not 

 that he cared much about her deserting him, for he had 

 two other wives at Tette, but he was indignant at her 

 abandoning his boy. 



While we were at Sesheke, an ox was killed by a croco- 

 dile ; a man found the carcass floating in the river, and ap- 

 propriated the meat. When the owner heard of this, he 

 requested him to come before the Chief, as he meant to 

 complain of him ; rather than go, the delinquent settled the 

 matter by giving one of his own oxen in lieu of the lost one. 

 A headman from near Linyanti came with a complaint that 

 all his people had run off, owing to the " hunger." Sekeletu 

 said, " You must not be left to grow lean alone, some of them 

 must come back to you." He had thus an order to compel 

 their return, if he chose to put it in force. Families fre- 



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