become more valuable. They readily acquiesced, and agreed
that a similar piece should be allotted to any other missionary,
at any other place to which the tribe might remove.
In our relations with this people w-e exercised no authority whatever. Our control depended entirely on persuasion ; and, having taught them by kind conversation as well as by public instruction, I expected them to do what their own sense of right and wrong dictated. Five instances are known to me in which by our influence on public opinion w^ar was prevented ; and where, in individual cases, we failed to do good, the people at least behaved no worse than before. In general they were slow, like all the African people, in coming to a decision on religious subjects; but in questions affecting their worldly affairs they were keenly alive to their own interests. They were stupid in matters which had not come within the sphere of their observation, but in other things they showed more intelligence than our own uneducated peasantry. They are knowing in cattle, sheep, and goats, and can tell exactly the kind of pasturage suited to each. They distinguish with equal judgment the varieties of soil which are best suited to different kinds of grain. They are familiar with the habits of wild animals, and are well up in the maxims which embody their ideas of political wisdom.
During the first year of our residence at Chonuane we were visited by one of those droughts which occur from time to time in even the most favoured districts of Africa. The belief in the power of rain-makinɡ is one of the most deeply- rooted articles of faith in this country. The chief Sechele Avas himself a noted rain-doctor, and he often assured me that he found it more difficult to give up this superstition than anything else which Christianity required him to abjure. I pointed out to him that the only way to water the gardens was to select some never-failing river, make a canal, and inigate the adjacent lands. The whole tribe moved accordingly to the Kolobeng, a stream about forty miles distant. The Bakwains made the canal and dam in exchange for my labour in assisting to build a square house for their chief. They also erected their school under my superintendence. Our house at the river Kolobeng, which gave a name to the settlement, was the third I had reared with my own hands.
