Chap. I. PROLONGED DROUGHT. 17 



become more valuable. They readily acquiesced, and agreed 

 that a similar piece should be allotted to any othei missionary 

 at any other place to which the tribe might remove. 



In our relations with this people we exercised no authority 

 whatever. Our control depended entirely on persuasion ; 

 and, having taught them by kind conversation as well as by 

 public instruction, I expected them to do what their own 

 sense of right and wrong dictated. Five instances are known 

 to me in which by our influence on public opinion war was 

 prevented; and where, in individual cases, we failed to do 

 good, the people at least behaved no worse than before. In 

 general they were slow, like all the African people, in coming 

 to a decision on religious subjects ; but in questions affecting 

 their worldly affairs they were keenly alive to their own 

 interests. They were stupid in matters which had not come 

 within the sphere of their observation, but in other things 

 they showed more intelligence than our own uneducated 

 peasantry. They are knowing in cattle, sheep, and goats, 

 and can tell exactly the kind of pasturage suited to each. 

 They distinguish with equal judgment the varieties of noil 

 which are best suited to different kinds of grain. They are 

 familiar with the habits of wild animals, and are well up in 

 the maxims which embody their ideas of political wisdom. 



During the first year of our residence at Chonuane we 

 were visited by one of those droughts which occur from time 

 to time in even the most favoured districts of Africa. The 

 belief in the power of rain-making is one of the most deeply- 

 rooted articles of faith in this country. The chief Sechele 

 was himself a noted rain-doctor, and he often assured me that 

 he found it more difficult to give up this superstition than 

 anything else which Christianity required him to abjure. I 

 pointed out to him that the only way to water the gardens 

 was to select some never-failing river, make a canal, and 

 irrigate the adjacent lands. The whole tribe moved accord- 

 ingly to the Kolobeng, a stream about forty miles distant. 

 The Bakwains made the canal and dam in exchange for my 

 labour in assisting to build a square house for their chief. 

 They also erected their school under my superintendence. 

 Our house at the river Kolobeng, which gave a name to the 

 settlement, was the third I had reared with my own hands. 



