536 
SLAVERY. — POLITICAL ALLIANCES. 
SO far rated as their own property, that they were sometimes, though 
rarely, transferred to another master. This was done only when 
their captor had a greater number of such servants than he required 
or than he had the means of feeding : yet they were never, I believe, 
sold to another tribe or nation. Whenever their parents desired to 
have their children home again, which often was the case when they 
were grown up, their masters never refused giving them up for a 
certain ransom, which amounted usually to the value of an ox and a 
cow, or a cow and two oxen. 
It is true, this practice stands precisely at that critical point 
where all which is wanting to ripen it into perfect slave-trade^ is the 
■presence of one of those unfeeling Europeans who still continue to 
disgrace, not only a civilized nation, but human nature itself ; it 
hangs on that nice balance, which may with equal facility be turned 
either way : and here, the presence of a genuine and philanthropic 
missionary might do some real and substantial good, by preach- 
mg the doctrine (now apparently in disuse among a great por-- 
tion of mankind) of ' doing unto others, as we would have others do 
unto us.' 
In their political alliances and friendships, the Bachapins, it 
would seem, are an inconstant people, guided only by selfish views 
and the prospect of booty. There is scarcely a nation around them, 
excepting the Bushmen, with which they have not at different times 
been both on friendly terms, and in a state of hostility : one year 
joining strength with some neighbouring tribe, to plunder another ; 
and the next, perhaps, assisting that which they had robbed, to 
plunder their late ally. With the Bushmen, they have never, I was 
told, formed any alliance ; but cherish always the recollection of the 
losses which the Bachapins have sustained from these more successful 
robbers, for whom they feel well-founded fear and a natural anti- 
pathy. Nor had they at this period, a less antipathy for the Nuak- 
ketsies, whom they always described to me, with evident hatred, as 
the worst men of the country. 
But a traveller visiting any of these nations, will always be 
misled, if he depend on any one of them, for the character of the 
other. In such misrepresentations, mercantile jealousy is largely 
