Chap. VI. 
EETALIATION ON BOEES. 
125 
branches, ending in ronnd orifices through which the water once 
flowed. The only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were 
baboons. I left at the end of the upper branch one of Father 
Mathew’s leaden teetotal tickets. 
I never saw the Bakwains looking so haggard and lean as at 
this time. ]\Iost of their cattle had been swept away by the Boers, 
together with about eighty fine draught-oxen; and much provision 
left with them by two officers. Captains Codringdon and Webb, to 
serve for their return journey south, had been carried off also. 
On their return these officers found the skeletons of the Bakwains 
where they expected to find their own goods. All the corn, 
clothing, and furniture of the people too had been consumed in 
the flames which the Boers had forced the subject tribes to apply 
to the town durino: tlie fioht, so that its inliabitants were now 
literally starving. 
Sechele had given orders to his j)eople not to commit any act 
of revenge pending his visit to the Queen of England; but some 
of the young men ventured to go to meet a party of Boers re¬ 
turning from hunting, and, as the Boers became terrified and ran 
off, they brought their waggons to Litubaruba. This seems to 
have given the main body of Boers an idea that the Bakwains 
meant to begin a guerilla war upon them. This “ Cafifre war ” 
was, however, only in embryo, and not near that stage of deve¬ 
lopment in wliich the natives have found out that the liide-and- 
seek system is the most successful. 
The Boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace ! 
I, being present, heard the condition: “ Sechele’s children must 
be restored to him.” I never saw men so completely and uncon¬ 
sciously in a trap as these four Boers were. Strong parties of 
armed Bakwains occupied every pass in the hills and gorges 
around; and had they not promised much more than they in¬ 
tended, or did perform, that day w^ould have been them last. 
The commandant Scholz had appropriated the children of Sechele 
to be his own domestic slaves. I was present when one little boy, 
Khari, son of Sechele, was returned to his mother ; the child had 
been allowed to roll into the fire, and there were three large un¬ 
bound open sores on different parts of his body. His mother and 
the women received him with a flood of silent tears. 
Slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places. 
