Sechele, the present king, to whom Livingstone has devoted more than one chapter of his “Travels,” and of whom I have some few further particulars to relate, formerly resided with his Bakuenas to the south-east of Molopolole, near the spot where we now find the town of the Manupi. His tribe had become considerably reduced in numbers, through its wars and skirmishes with the surrounding people. Nothing but ruins now marks the site of his former home, which was near the Transvaal frontier, and called Kolobeng. Here it was that, in 1842, he was visited by the Nestor of African travellers.
Driven from Kolobeng by the Boers, Sechele next settled in Liteyana; but, in 1865, he migrated about ten miles eastward to Molopolole, where already there was a settlement established, and where he was joined by Pilani from Masupa. His territory, which is the most northerly of the four Bechuana kingdoms that I have mentioned, is bounded on the west by the great Namaqualand; on the north by the eastern and western Bamangwato; on the east by the Limpopo and Marico on the Transvaal frontier; and on the south by the country of the Banquaketse. The southern frontier lies under lat. 24° 10´ S., and runs down past Kolobeng, in a south-east direction, as far as the Dwars Mountains and the Great Marico; the northern frontier, on the side of the two Bamangwato kingdoms, is in lat. 23° 30´ S., and partly follows the course of the Sirorume River. I should estimate the number of Sechele’s actual subjects to be about 35,000, whilst the Batlokas, Bakhatlas, and Makhosi that reside in the country, but are not tributary to him, amount to 18,000 or 20,000 more. The entire population of Banquaketseland is nearly 30,000; the subjects of Montsua, the Barolong king, muster 35,000; whilst the smaller Barolong tribes that reside further in the neighbourhood of such towns as Marokana, and do not pay tribute to Montsua, may be estimated at 30,000 more. Mankuruane, the Batlapin king, has more than 30,000 people under his dominion; and in the little Mamusa kingdom there are now scarcely 8000 inhabitants, although a few years ago there were at least 10,000 in the neighbourhood of Mamusa Town alone.
On the evening of the 21st, our encampment in the Molopolole valley was visited by an ill-clad Dutchman, who worked here as a smith, and by two natives, who directed us where to find pasturage for our oxen. They were soon followed by Mr. Price and Mr. Williams, the two missionaries, who came to bid us welcome to the place. Mr. Williams has since returned to Europe, and Mr. Price has been ordered by his society to Central Africa. By his second marriage with Miss Moffat, this gentleman became related to Dr. Livingstone.
I took two excursions next morning—one to the ruined town on the west, and another up the glen that opened into the valley, by the Molopolole Pass. Amongst the ruins I noticed some vaulted buildings, constructed of reeds, twigs, and cement, similar to those which I had seen in Mosilili’s Town on the Mosupa River. Turkish figs, and the well-known South African datura, with its violet-coloured blossoms, grew luxuriantly about the place.
The huts occupied by the Bakuenas, or Bakwenas, differed somewhat from those of the Batlapins and Barolongs. They were generally less substantially built, and in this respect were especially inferior to the Barolong huts; most of them, however, had the clay enclosures which are formed by the eastern Batlapins round their fire-places, but which are dispensed with by those of the south and west. In the villages, I found small meeting-rooms, or conference-halls, standing amongst the homesteads; they consisted of a conical straw roof, supported on twenty piles or more, the intervals between the piles being filled up half-way by a substantial wall of rushes, ornamented with simple devices in ochre.
My little expedition up the Molopolole glen well repaid me for the trouble. I shot several fish, and by the help of my rod caught no less than seven sheat-fish. Under the overhanging, almost perpendicular cliff, that formed the left-hand side of the pass, was a deep place that by means of dams, partly natural and partly artificial, was kept perpetually full of water, which got dried up within the town. In arid seasons, this was an excellent refuge for the fish, better even than the smaller pools higher up the glen, which, being exposed to the ravages of otters and lizards, did not allow the fish to be propagated as rapidly as they otherwise would have been.
KING SECHELE.
Accepting an invitation from the missionaries, I paid them a visit, and found that Mr. Price had a home that was furnished with much comfort and considerable taste. It must, however, have been a great difficulty for him to attain such an amount of domestic civilization. He had been one of the two missionaries appointed to conduct the mission into the country of the Makololos; their reverses, however, had been so many, and their non-success so complete, that they had been obliged to abandon their undertaking. His associate, Mr. Williams, belonged, like himself and the other missionaries in Kuruman, Taung, Kanya, and Shoshong, to the London Missionary Society; he had been several years in South Africa, and was now building himself a house. They offered to introduce me to the king. Accordingly, on the second day after my arrival, we proceeded to mount the rocky heights on which, like an eagle’s nest, stands the part of the town that is occupied by Sechele and his retinue. Passing the unfinished house of Mr. Williams, we had first to ascend a narrow section of the glen, at the end of which stood the chapel built by Mr. Price, an unpretending edifice, sixty feet long and twenty-one feet wide, with an aisle and a thatched roof. Thence we passed on through the south-east quarter of the upper portion of the town, and, before proceeding to the royal residence, had to direct our steps to the kotla, to pay our respects to the king, who had received formal notice of my arrival. By the “kotla,” I mean one of the enclosures that I have described as erected in Bechuana villages and towns for the purposes of conference and debate. On the side of the enclosure facing the royal residence was an opening, capable of being closed at pleasure by trunks of trees. Sitting on a bench near this spot, the king, surrounded by his relatives, subordinates, and the elders of his tribe, listens to the reports of his hunters, spies, and messengers, receives the visits of ambassadors from other kings, who are allowed to squat before him on the ground; and delivers all his judgments, sometimes by his own word, and sometimes by the mouth of one of his representatives. Not unfrequently there is a small wooden hut close at hand within the enclosure, where a fire is kept burning, providing a place of assembly in wet weather. The kotlas are sometimes obliged to serve as forts; and such as are situated at the foot of hills are protected on the side of attack by logs of extra size and weight as a defence against missiles.
Sechele received us standing. He was a man considerably over fifty years of age, stout, very tall, and with such a perpetual smile playing on his face as to give me at once the impression that I was in the presence of an utter hypocrite. This primâ facie impression was subsequently confirmed.