Notes on N' garni land. 
385 
of the heart, as it were ; the fish after entering are unable to find their 
way out again. The portable traps are basket-shaped, the smaller kind 
made of chita " rush, and the larger of reeds. The Makuba also spear 
fish. 
They seldom wear European clothes, wearing a strip of steenbuck 
leather about the middle, worn, like the Masarwa, bathing-drawers 
fashion, but with a butterfiy-like ornament behind consisting of a pair 
of wings about 6 inches in diameter of untanned steenbuck skin with a 
white border. This typical Makuba ornament looks rather quaint and 
neat. They also make themselves leather jackets, sleeveless as a rule, 
out of pala or reedbuck skin, and straw hats out of grass. 
Following the Batawana, a fair percentage of Makuba profess Chris- 
tianity to-day. They have no religion of their own, but merely believe in 
the existence of a Supreme Being. Different groups of them, like other 
tribes, have their totems among the antelope or other wild animals, but 
this is unconnected with any kind of religious worship. Their law of 
succession used to. be — as it is with the Mampukushu to-day — through the 
female line ; the eldest son of the eldest sister of the deceased male being 
the heir. But now the majority have adopted the Batawana law of 
succession through the male line. 
The Batawana, like other Bechuana, wear European clothes, which 
they began to adopt as long ago as the seventies. They are mostly 
Christians. The work of conversion begun by Livingstone during his 
short stay at the Lake on his way to the Makololo being continued by 
Khukwe, a native missionary installed by him at the Lake, and in later 
years by Mr, Wookey. 
Up till the middle of the eighties the Batawana lived at the eastern 
end of the Lake, the spot called Toten to-day — the name being a contrac- 
tion of Matoteh, or Matlotlefi as it should be in Sechuana, but the Bata- 
wana drop the " 1 " sound in all Sechuana words with " tl." Matlotlefi is 
the locative case of Matlotla (abandoned and ruined huts). 
Under the Chief Moremi, in consequence of the two Matabele raids on 
them, the Batawana in 1886, just after the second raid, moved their 
village to Nokaneil, on the Okovango, 45 miles north of Tsau, thence to 
Komokaku, thence to Nakalechwe, and thence to Tsau, where they dwell 
to-day under the young Chief Mathiba, son of Moremi, who was installed 
by the Government as chief in 1906 in place of Sekgoma, his uncle, who, 
for political reasons, was deposed and deported. Tsau is 462 miles by 
road from the railway, at Palapye Eoad Station, the journey occupying 
five to six weeks by ox-wagon. Its altitude is, according to Dr. Passarge, 
2,969 feet (950 metres) above sea-level, and that of Lake N'gami the 
same. 
On the occasion of the Matabele raid in 1886, the Batawana with 
