MEETING BETWEEN BASUTOS RETURNING FROM THE DIAMOND FIELDS AND OTHERS GOING THITHER.
Page 213.
As the Basutos, whom I have just mentioned, formed in 1872 and 1873 the larger contingent of the coloured labourers, I should like to say a few words about them, thus including them in my general survey of the family of the Bantus.
I divide the natives of South Africa into three races—the Bushmen, the Hottentots, and the Bantus. To the first belong the Bushmen proper; to the second the Hottentots proper, the Griquas, and the Korannas; whilst the third includes the colonial Kaffirs, Zulus, Basutos, Bechuanas, Makalakas, and other tribes, about forty in all; besides which there are transition types between the races, as, for instance, between the Bushmen and the Bantus. It is a subject, however, upon which I have no scope to enlarge here.
Of these tribes, we have already made some acquaintance with the Korannas and two tribes of the Batlapins. The Basutos reside chiefly on the Cornetspruit and the Caledon River, extending thence to the Drakensbergen; they consequently occupy the country bounded by the Free State, Cape Colony, Nomansland, and Natal. Their language is called Sesuto. Since their war with the Orange Free State they have lived under English jurisdiction, whilst their neighbours on the west, the southern Barolongs, another branch of the Bantus, have become subjects of the Orange Republic.
In agriculture, the Basutos have advanced more than any other tribe. Next to them in this respect come the Baharutse, in the Marico district in the Transvaal, of whom I shall have to speak subsequently, in the narrative of my second journey. The Basuto farms are very small, but they produce hundreds of thousands of bushels of corn, and abound in horses and cattle. There is no doubt that both the Basutos and the Baharutse are yearly increasing in affluence.
Not long ago, when the most southerly of the Basuto chiefs collected all the unruly spirits he could find—runaway servants, thieves, fugitive Gaikas and Galekas, the residuum of the last Kaffir war—and attempted to plunder, and to revolt from British rule, all the rest of the Basutos remained faithful, and voluntarily sent 2000 armed horsemen into the field on the side of the English.
With a few unimportant exceptions, the structure of the Basuto huts, and the general character of their work, correspond with those of the Bechuanas, and in their handicraft they are about up to the average of the Bantu tribes. In one respect they differ from the rest of their kin: they manufacture carved wooden fetishes, painting them red and black.
Thaba Bosigo is their most important kraal; Thaba Unshee being that of the Barolongs in the Free State. They have penetrated as far north as the confluence of the Chobe and the Zambesi.
