Baffled on this occasion, by the advice of his rain-doctor Montsua next required that the followers of the new faith should take parts in two ceremonies connected with rain-magic; first, in the letshulo-hunt appointed by the rain-doctors for the capture of certain wild animals, parts of which were employed in the incantations; and, secondly, in turning up a plot of ground for the service of the doctors, which was afterwards considered consecrated, and called “tsimo ea pulta,” the garden of the rain. To both these demands the converts again resolutely refused to submit, giving the king to understand that while they were ready to submit to any other proof of their loyalty, since they had become “bathu ba lehuku” their consciences would not allow them to participate in the idolatrous usages of their forefathers.
BAROLONG WOMEN AT MOSHANENG.
Again thwarted, the king was driven to devise some other measures for bringing the recusants to obedience; the constitutional form of his government, and the large numbers of the adherents of the new creed both making it difficult to bring the offenders to justice. He soon tried another scheme. On the following Saturday, when both Molema and Yan had gone away into the country, he issued an order, and caused it to be circulated through the town, that no person would be allowed to attend the church on the next day. The women took up the matter; aware that Christianity raised them to an equality with their husbands, they came to the unanimous decision that no notice was to be taken of the king’s order. Accordingly, Sunday came, and at the hour of service not a member of the congregation was absent from his usual place. The king, perhaps, might have heard the singing from his own house; or perhaps there were plenty to inform him what was going on; at any rate, he got into a towering passion, and, seizing a long knife, rushed off to the church, which he entered just as one of the men, in Molema’s absence, was delivering a prayer of thanksgiving. His appearance naturally caused no little commotion amongst the worshippers, and in the midst of the excitement, he bellowed out a peremptory order that they should all disperse. One of the women calmly confronted him, and said that the “bathu ba lehuku” must finish their service first. Enraged at the open defiance of his authority, and incensed by the temerity of the woman, he made such vehement and indiscriminate thrusts with his formidable weapon, that he quite succeeded in clearing the building.
Amongst the converts were one of his own daughters and her husband; at first he simply forbade her to leave her own house, but when he ascertained that she was visited there by one of the new community, who joined in hymns and prayers with her, he took her away from her husband, brought her back to his own residence, and obliged her to revert to the heathen custom of wearing nothing but a leather apron.
In course of time, however, as Montsua found that his opposition was of no avail, and discovered, moreover, that the converts not only remained just as faithful subjects as before, but were the most industrious and the most thriving of all his population, he grew weary of his persecution, and subsequently, when he and Molema separated, although he did not himself embrace the new faith, he so far favoured the cause of Christianity as to direct Yan, the Barolong, to continue preaching amongst the surrounding people, and to permit Molema to do the same in his town on the Molapo.[11]
In acknowledgment of some trifling medical services that I had rendered to himself and his household, Montsua presented me with 1l., and with some beautiful ostrich feathers, four black and four white, which he said were for my wife; he looked very incredulous when I told him that I did not possess a wife, and observed that I could keep the feathers until I had one. Besides this, his gratitude was so great that in return for my Snider-rifle he let me have five strong bullocks. By the assistance of Mr. Martin, and another resident merchant, I procured five more, so that with what I retained of my own, I had the satisfactory prospect of continuing my journey with a good team of fourteen.
My stay in Moshaneng was advantageous both to my ethnographical and entomological collections. I obtained a number of curiosities in the way of costumes, kiris, and other weapons, sticks branded with ornamental devices, water-vessels made from ostrich-eggs, wooden spoons and platters, and snuff-boxes made of gourd-shells or horn. One way or another, too, including duplicates, I collected as many as 350 insects, amongst which were a new cerambyx, another of the same family with black and yellow bands, and one copper-coloured and two green scarabæidæ. The dry mimosa-hedges seemed to be the favourite resort of two handsome kinds of Longicorn beetles.
When, on the morning of the 18th, I prepared to start, all the great people of Moshaneng turned out to bid me farewell; Montsua and Mr. Martin each bringing me another beautiful white feather. The king insisted on shaking hands with me over and over again, and as the last proof of his regard offered to lend me a guide as far as Molopolole, the residence of the king of the Bakuenas; although the man did not look very strong, I thought it more graceful to accept the offer.
After leaving the town, we turned first north-west, then north, crossing two rivers, the second of which was named the Koluany; we then came to a hilly country, the scenery of which, in beauty, resembled the imposing Makalaka highlands in miniature. The table-land consisted partly of bushwood, and partly of grass-land, interspersed here and there with thinly-wooded districts, and with rocky eminences sometimes eighty feet in height, composed of huge blocks of granite, generally pyramidal in form. The soil near these rugged crags was usually moist, and they were bordered with mimosas, and covered with rich vegetation, amongst which small aloes with their pink and crimson blossoms, stapelias with their dark velvet-like flowers, and cactus-like euphorbiaceæ, with their wondrous shapes, shone pre-eminent, and charmed the eye not only by their intrinsic beauty, but by the profusion in which they grew in every cleft of weather-beaten rock, here peeping out from some dark hollow, and there tightly wedged between two blocks of stone. But no object on these rocky heights was so striking as the sycamores that spread their light-grey roots, now broad and flat, now thick and forked, like a network down the steep sides of the cliff, their succulent stems rising from the crevices frequently to eight or ten feet, and terminating in a crown of handsome foliage. Wood-sorrels, ferns, mosses, and lichens of many kinds were abundant, and I observed several new lepidoptera and beetles; amongst the mammalia there were some small beasts of prey and a great many rock-rabbits. Towards the west, the land sloped towards a brook that, after rain, assumes the dimensions of a river; from Moshaneng it flows north by west, then north-west, and finally due north, when it joins the Molapo. The declivity is steep, and the upper part wooded, and is known to be the resort of Hyæna brunnea and punctata, as well as of the caracal and leopard.