504 
FALSE TESTIMONY OF MULOJA, 
3 Aug. 
other questions, I asked him if the Nuakketsies or their chief had 
ever alleged any cause of complaint against those white-men, or if 
my countrymen had in any manner given them offence : — he replied ; 
No, none whatever. When I inquired if their bones were still to be 
found, and offered for them a great reward if they could by any 
possible means be brought to me, he said that these had been all 
beaten into very small pieces and thrown into the fire. I promised 
payment in my best beads for any part of those waggons, or of the 
iron-work belonging to them ; but the waggons, he said, were burnt, 
and the iron was all converted into knives, hatchets and hassagays : 
some European clothes, however, were still to be seen at Melitta (the 
chief town of the Nuakketsies), as were also the sheep and oxen ; but 
the horses were killed a short time afterwards, and the saddles were 
burnt. On expressing a desire to obtain some of the white-men's 
hair, which, I said, had probably been saved as a curiosity, he replied 
that that also had been thrown into the fire. When I asked him, 
relatively to the contents of those waggons, whether he had seen any 
very extraordinary things, different from any which had ever before 
been brought into the country, he was unable to answer until the 
Chief told him to say, a great number of gilt chains exactly like that 
which I had presented to Mattivi. I proceeded at first to question 
him very particularly as to all the circumstances of the alleged murder, 
in order to derive some internal evidence which might convince me 
either of the truth or falsity of his testimony ; but Muloja himself 
and Matlivi and all the chieftains who sat round us, finding that their 
story could not stand against this scrutiny, began to show themselves 
displeased at my making such minute inquiries ; and the man, 
apparently confused in his account, asked roughly, why I put so many 
questions, as though I doubted his veracity : he had, he said, beheld 
the whole affair with his own eyes, and had seen Mokkaba's people 
cut ofJ' their heads and arms ; and that ought to be enough to con- 
vince me that it was the Nuakketsies who had put all the party, to 
death, excepting, however, only one of the Klaarwater Hottentots; who 
escaped and took refuge in Makrakki's town, where, by order of that 
chief, he was stabbed the next morning. Muloja here forgot that he 
