14 RAIN-MEDICINE. 



three hundred yards below the hill. Can it be that they 

 have the power of combining the oxygen and hydrogen 

 of their vegetable food by vital force so as to form water? * 



Rain, however, would not fall ; the Bakwains believed 

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

 received deputations in the evenings, 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." It was in vain to 

 protest that I wished Sechele to act just according to his 

 own ideas of what was right, as he found the law laid down 

 in the Bible ; and it was distressing to appear hard-hearted 

 to them. The clouds often collected promisingly over us, 

 and rolling thunder seemed to portend refreshing showers, 

 but next morning the sun would rise in a clear cloudless 

 sky ; indee'd, even these lowering appearances were less 

 frequent by far than days of sunshine are in London. 



The natives, finding it irksome to sit and wait helplessly 

 until God gives them rain from heaven, entertain the more 

 comfortable idea that they can help themselves by a 

 variety of preparations, such as charcoal made of burned 

 bats, inspissated renal deposit of the mountain coney 

 (Hyrax capensis) (which by the way is used in the form 

 of pills as a good anti-spasmodic, under the name of " stone 

 sweat " f ), the internal parts of different animals — as 

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

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

 vertebrae, and every kind of tuber, bulb, root, and plant 

 to be found in the country. Although you disbelieve 

 their efficacy in charming the clouds to pour out their 

 refreshing treasures, yet, 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 bulbous root, 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 



* When we come to Angola I shall describe an insect there which 

 distils several pints of water every night. 



f The name arises from its being always voided on one spot, in the 

 manner practised by others of the rhinocerontine family ; and by the 

 cation of the sun it becomes a black pitchy substance. 



