146 
THE “ SECHU; 
Chap. VII. 
cerity of such persons to the test by offering them the fangs 
of a really poisonous variety, and found they shrank from the 
experiment. 
When we reached the Bamangwato, the chief Sekomi was par¬ 
ticularly friendly, collected all his people to the religious services 
we held, and explained his reasons for compelling some English¬ 
men to pay him a horse. ‘‘ They would not sell him any powder, 
though they had plenty ; so he compelled them to give it and the 
horse for nothing. He would not deny the extortion to me; that 
would be ‘boherehere’ (swindling).” He thus thought extortion 
better than swindling. I could not detect any difference in the 
morahty of the two transactions, but Sekomi’s ideas of honesty 
are the lowest I have met with in any Bechuana chief, and this 
instance is mentioned as the only approach to demanding pay¬ 
ment for leave to pass that I have met with in the South. In all 
other cases the difSculty has been to get a chief to give us men 
to show the way, and the payment has only been for guides. 
Englishmen have always very properly avoided giving that idea 
to the native mind Avhich we shall hereafter find prove trouble¬ 
some, that payment ought to be made for passage through a 
coimtry. 
All the Bechuana and Caffre tribes south of the Zambesi 
practise circumcision (hoguera), but the rites observed are care¬ 
fully concealed. The initiated alone can approach, but in this 
town I was once a spectator of the second part of the cere¬ 
mony of the circumcision, called “ sechu.” Just at the dawn of 
day, a row of boys of nearly fomdeen years of age stood naked in 
the kotla, each having a pair of sandals as a shield on liis hands. 
Facing them stood the men of the town in a similar state of 
nudity, all armed with long thin wands, of a tough, strong, supple 
bush called moretloa (Gretvia Jlava), and engaged in a dance 
named “ koha,” in which questions are put to the boys, as Will 
you guard the chief well ? ” “ Will you herd the cattle well ? ” 
and wliile the latter give an affirmative response, the men rush 
forward to them, and each aims a full-weight blow at the back of 
one of the boys; shielding himself with the sandals above his 
head, he causes the supple wand to descend and bend into liis 
back, and every stroke inflicted thus makes the blood squirt out 
of a wound a foot or eighteen inches long. At the end of the 
