Chap. I. KAIN-MEDIC1NE. l\) 



rock, they jould have no subterranean passage to the river, 

 which ran about three hundred yards below the hill. Can it 

 be that they have the power of combining by vital force the 

 oxygen and hydrogen of their vegetable food so as to form 

 water ? * 



Eain, however, would not fall ; the Bakwains believed that 

 I had bound Sechele with some magic spell, and I received 

 deputations of the old counsellors, entreating me to allow him 

 to make only a few showers : " The corn will die if you 

 refuse, and we shall become scattered. Only let him make 

 rain this once, and we shall all, men, women, and children, 

 come to the school and sing and pray as long as you please." 



The method by which the natives imagine they can charm 

 the clouds to pour out their refreshing treasure is by burning 

 a variety of preparations, such as charcoal made of bats ; 

 inspissated renal deposit f of the mountain coney {Hyrax 

 capensis), which is also used in the form of pills as a good anti- 

 spasmodic ; jackals' livers, baboons' and lions' hearts, hairy 

 calculi from the bowels of old cows, serpents' skins and 

 vertebra?, and every kind of tuber, root, and plant to be found 

 in the country. Conscious that civility is useful everywhere, 

 you kindly state that you think they are mistaken, as to their 

 power ; the rain-doctor selects a particular bulb, pounds it, 

 and administers a cold infusion to a sheep, which in five 

 minutes afterwards expires in convulsions. Part of the same 

 bulb is converted into smoke, and ascends towards the sky ; 

 rain follows in a day or two. The inference is obvious. 

 Were we as much harassed by droughts, the logic would be 

 irresistible in England in 1857. 



The Bakwains still went on treating us with kindness, and 

 I am not aware of ever having had an enemy in the tribe ; 

 but as they believed that there must be some connection 

 between the presence of " God's Word " in their town and 

 these successive droughts, they looked with no good will at 

 the church -bell. " We like you," said the uncle of Sechele, a 

 very influential and sensible person, " as well as if you had 

 been born among us ; you are the only white man we can 



* When we come to Angola I shall describe an inseet there which distils several 

 pints of water every night. 



t By the action of the sun it becomes a black pitchy substance 



