292 AN OLD WARRIOR. CHAr. XIV. 



quently leave their own headman and flee to another village, 

 and sometimes a whole village decamps by night, leaving 

 the headman by himself. Sekeletu rarely interfered with 

 the liberty of the subject to choose his own headman, and, as 

 it is often the fault of the latter which causes the people to 

 ■depart, it is punishment enough for him to be left alone. 

 Flagrant disobedience to the Chief's orders is punished with 

 death. A Moshubia man was ordered to cut some reeds for 

 Sekeletu : he went off, and hid himself for two days instead. 

 For this he was doomed to die, and was carried in a canoe 

 to the middle of the river, choked, and tossed into the 

 stream. The spectators hooted the executioners, calling 

 out to them that they too would soon be carried out and 

 strangled. Occasionally when a man is sent to beat an 

 offender, he tells him his object, returns, and assures the 

 Chief he has nearly killed him. The transgressor then keeps 

 for a while out of sight, and the matter is forgotten. The 

 river here teems with monstrous crocodiles, and women are 

 frequently, while drawing water, carried off by these reptiles. 

 We met a venerable warrior, sole survivor, probably, of the 

 Mantatee host which threatened to invade the colony in 1824. 

 He retained a vivid recollection of their encounter with the 

 Griquas : " As we looked at the men and horses, puffs of 

 smoke arose, and some of us dropped down dead ! " " Never 

 saw anything like it in my life, a man's brains lying in one 

 place and his body in another ! " They could not understand 

 what was killing them ; a ball struck a man's shield at an 

 angle ; knocked his arm out of joint at the shoulder ; and 

 leaving a mark, or burn as he said, on the shield, killed 

 another man close by. We saw the man with his shoulder 

 still dislocated. Sebetuane was present at the fight, and 

 had an exalted opinion of the power of white people ever 

 afterwards. 



