embraced Christianity, but expounds its doctrines to his
people, I will here give a brief sketch of his career.
His great-grandfather Mochoasele was a great traveller, and the first that ever told the Bakwains of the existence of white men. In his father's lifetime two white men, whom I suppose to have been Dr.Cowan and Captain Donovan, passed through the country (in 1808), and descended the river Limpopo. They and their party all died of fever. The rain-makers, fearing lest their waggons might drive away the rain, ordered them to be thrown into the stream. A son of the chief at whose village they perished remembered, when a boy, partaking of one of the horses, and said it tasted like zebra's flesh. The Bakwains were then rich in cattle; and it is one of the many evidences of the subsequent desiccation of the country', that streams are pointed out where thousands and thousands of cattle formerly drank, and in which water now never flows.
When Sechele was still a boy, his father, also named Mochoasele, was murdered by his own people for taking to himself the wives of his rich underchiefs. The children were spared, and their friends invited Sebituane, the chief of the Makololo, who was then in those parts, to reinstate them in the chieftainship. He undertook the task, and surrounded the town of the Bakwains by night. Just as it began to dawn his herald proclaimed in a loud voice that he had come to revenge the death of Mochoasele. His followers, who encircled the place, beat loudly on their shields, and the panic was tremendous. There was a rush like that from a theatre on fire, while the Makololo used their javelins on the terrified fugitives with a dexterity which they alone can employ. Sebituane had given orders that the sons of Mochoasele should be spared. One of the men, meeting Sechele, put him in ward by giving him such a blow on the head with a club as to render him insensible. The usurper was killed, and Sechele was restored to the chieftainship.
He married the daughters of three of his underchiefs who, on account of their blood relationship, had stood by him in his adversity. This is one of the modes adopted for cementing the allegiance of a tribe. They are fond of the relationship to great families. If you meet a party of strangers, and the
