three years. Perceiving the difficulties of his case, and feeling compassion for the poor women, who were by far the best
of our scholars, 1 had no desire that he should be in a hurry
to make a full profession by baptism, and put away all his*
wives but one. His principal wife, too, was the most unlikely
person in the tribe to partake his views. I have seen him
again and again send her out of church to put on her gown,
and she walked away with her lips shot out, the very picture
of unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions.
When he at last applied for baptism, I asked him how, being acquainted with the Bible, he thought he ought to act. He went home, and gave each of his supernumerary wives new clothing, together with all the goods they had been accustomed to keep in their huts for him. He then sent them to their parents with an intimation that he had no fault to find with them, but that he wished to follow the will of God. When he and his children were baptized, great numbers came to see the ceremony. Some thought, from a stupid story which had been circulated by the enemies to Christianity in the south, that the converts would be made to drink an infusion of "dead men's brains," and were astonished to find that only water was used. Seeing several old men in tears during the service, I afterwards asked them the cause of their weeping. They were crying to see their father, as the Scotch remark of a case of suicide, "so far left to himself." They seemed to think that 1 had thrown the glamour over him and that he had become mine. All the friends of the divorced wives now became the opponents of our religion. The attendance at school and church dwindled down to very few besides the family of the chief. They all continued to treat us with respectful kindness, but to Sechele himself they uttered things which, had they ventured on in former times, would, as he often remarked, have cost them their lives.
I pass from the chief to give a rapid sketch of our dealing with his people, the Bakuena, or Bakwains. When first we went to reside at Chonuane about 5l. worth of goods were given for a small piece of land sufficient for a garden. This purchase seemed strange to a tribe with whom the idea of buying land was entirely new; but we explained to them that we wished to avoid any cause of future dispute when ground had
