Chap. IV. HIS CAREER. 59 



Sebituane came, and sat down by the fire which was lighted 

 for us behind the hedge where we lay. As his career has 

 been most remarkable, and he was unquestionably the greatest 

 man in that country, I shall give a short sketch of his life. 



He was about forty-five years of age ; of a tall and wiry 

 form, an olive or coffee-and-milk complexion, and slightly 

 bald. His manner was cool and collected, and he was more 

 frank in his answers than any other chief I have met. He 

 was the greatest warrior ever heard of beyond the colony, and 

 always led his men into batttle himself. When he saw the 

 enemy he felt the edge of his battle-axe and said/' Aha ! it is 

 sharp, and whoever turns his back on the enemy will feel its 

 edge." He was so fleet of foot, that all his people knew there 

 was no escape for the coward. In some instances of skulking 

 he allowed the individual to return home. Then he summoned 

 him into his presence and said, " Ah, you prefer dying at 

 home to dying in the field, do you? You shall have your 

 desire." This was the signal for his immediate execution. 



He came from the country near the sources of the Likwa 

 and Xamagari rivers in the south, and was now eight or 

 nine hundred miles from his birthplace. He was not the 

 son of a chief, though related closely to the reigning family of 

 the Basiitu. He was one in that immense horde of savages 

 driven back by the Griquas from Kuruman in 1824, and he 

 fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and cattle. 

 At Melita the Bangwaketse collected the Bakwains, Bakatla, 

 and Bahurutse, to "eat them up." Placing his men in 

 front, and the women behind the cattle, he routed the whole 

 of his enemies at one blow. Having thus conquered Makabe, 

 the chief of the Bangwaketse, he took immediate possession of 

 his town and all his goods. 



Sebituane subsequently settled at Litubaruba, where Sechele 

 now dwells, and his people suffered severely in one of those 

 unrecorded attacks by white men, in which murder is com- 

 mitted and materials laid up in the conscience for a future 

 judgment. A great variety of fortune followed him in the 

 northern part of the Bechuana country. Twice he lost all 

 his cattle by the attacks of the Matebele, but always kept 

 his people together, and retook more than he lost. He then 

 crossed the Desert by nearly the same path that we did. 



