336 CHARACTER OF THE MAKOLOLO. Chap. XXV. 



sf benevolence flowing from the rich to the poor which we 

 have in England, nor yet the unostentatious attentions which 

 we have among our own poor to each other. The rich show 

 kindness to the poor only in expectation of services in return ; 

 while a poor person who has no relatives will seldom be 

 supplied even with water in illness, and when dead will be 

 dragged out to be devoured by the hyaenas, instead of being 

 buried. Belatives alone will condescend to touch a dead 

 body. It would be easy to enumerate instances of inhumanity 

 which I have witnessed. An interesting-looking girl came to 

 my waggon one clay, in a state of nudity, and almost a ske- 

 leton. She was a captive from another tribe, and had been 

 neglected by her master on the ground that he had been un- 

 successful in raising a crop of corn, and had no food to give 

 her. I volunteered to take her ; but he said that after I had 

 fed her up a bit he should take her away. I was thus pre- 

 cluded from attending to her wants, and in a day or two after 

 she perished miserably, having gone out a little way from the 

 town, and being too weak to return. Another day I saw a 

 poor captive boy, apparently in a starving condition, going to 

 the water to drink. This case I brought before the chief in 

 council, and found that his emaciation was ascribed to disease 

 and want combined. Sekeletu decided that the owner of this 

 boy should give up his alleged right, rather than destroy the 

 child. When I took him he was so far gone as to be in the 

 cold stage of starvation, but was soon brought round by a 

 little milk given three or four times a day. On leaving Lin- 

 yanti I handed him over to the charge of his chief Sekeletu, 

 who feeds his servants very well. Having thus far noticed 

 the dark side of the native character, I must not omit to add 

 that I hare witnessed frequent acts of kindness and liberality. 

 1 have seen instances in which both men and women have 

 taken up little orphans, and carefully reared them as their own 

 children. It would not be difficult therefore by a selection of 

 cases of either kind to make these people appear either exces- 

 sively good or excessively bad. 



I still possessed some of the coffee which I had brought 

 from Angola, and some of the sugar which I had left in my 

 waggon. So long as the sugar lasted, Sekeletu favoured me 

 with his company at meals ; but it soon came to an end. The 



