84 
CAEEEE OF SEBITUANE. 
Chap. IV. 
credit of our coining. Prepared skins of oxen as soft as cloth were 
given to cover us tlnough the night; and as nothing could be 
returned to tliis cliief, Mahale became the owner of them. Long 
before it was day, Sebituane came, and sitting down by the fire, 
wliich was lighted for om* benefit behind the hedge where we lay, 
he narrated the difficulties he had himself experienced, when a 
young man, in erossing that same Desert which we had mastered 
long afterwards. As he has been most remarkable in his career, 
and was unquestionably the greatest man iu all that country, a 
short sketch of his life may prove interesting to the reader. 
Sebituane was about forty-five years of age; of a tall and wiry 
form, an olive or coffee-and-milk colour, and shghtly bald; in 
manner cool and collected, and more frank in liis answers than 
any other cliief I ever met. He was the greatest warrior ever 
heard of beyond the colony, for, unlike Mosilikatse, Dingaan, and 
others, he always led his men into battle liimself. When he saw 
the enemy he felt the edge of liis battle-axe and said, Aha! it 
is sharp, and whoever turns his back on the enemy will feel its 
edge.” So fleet of foot was he, that aU his people knew there 
was no escape for the coward, as any such would be cut down 
without mercy. In some instances of skulking, he allowed the 
individual to return home ; then calling him, he would say, Ah, 
you prefer dying at home to dying in the field, do you ? You 
shall have your desire.” Tliis was the signal for his immediate 
execution. 
He came from the country near the sources of the Likwa and 
Namagari rivers in the south, so we met him eight hundred or 
nine hundred miles from liis bhthplace. He was not the son of 
a cliief, though related closely to the reigning family of the Ba- 
sutu; and when in an attack by Sikonyele the tribe was driven 
out of one part, Sebituane was one in that immense horde of 
savages driven back by the Griquas from Xuruman in 1824."^ 
He then fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and 
cattle. At Mehta the Bangwaketse collected the Bakwains, 
Bakatla, and Bahurutse, to “ eat them up.” Placing his men in 
front, and the women beliind the cattle, he routed the whole of 
liis enemies at one blow. Having thus conquered Makabe, the 
* Sec an account of tliis affair in Moffat’s ‘ Missionary Enterprise in 
Africa.’ 
