The track that we followed up the Limpopo valley bore every indication of not having been used for years; it was painfully bad, being everywhere either blockaded by stones or covered with deep sand. On the 1st of July we halted, and stayed the next day as well, at one of the pools on the Notuany, that I have elsewhere described as being fed by springs as well as by the overflow of the river, and consequently contain water long after the stream itself is dry. This pool was about 150 yards long, and about twenty yards wide, and full of fish.
One of the wheels of the waggon in which Mr. Mackenzie was travelling having broken, we had to wait while Mr. Hepburn went forward to Mochuri, the next town on our route, belonging to the western Bakhatlas, to procure a new one from the traders there. The damage being made good, we all proceeded to Mochuri, where we learnt the full particulars of the late engagement—the remnant of the Bakhatla defeated force having returned there on the preceding day. They had succeeded so far as to approach Molopolole unawares. They had killed sixteen Kalahari herdsmen, and had made themselves masters of all their cattle. They had defied all the efforts of the residents to recover their herds, and it was only at last, when they found themselves face to face with the breech-loaders which the Bakuenas had procured from the traders, that they were obliged to retreat and abandon their booty. Ten of them had fallen on the spot; four of the wounded had made their way home; but numbers of them, in spite of Sechele, the Bakuena king, being a Christian, were overtaken and massacred according to the custom of the tribe. They had, they avowed, been goaded on to make their attack because the Bakuenas had pillaged their cattle-stations, and cut off the hands and feet of many of the women.
Formerly the Bakhatlas had resided in the Transvaal; but after the occupation of the Boers, most of them left, and settled under two separate chiefs in Sechele’s territory, becoming known respectively as the eastern and western Bakhatlas. Sechele had now demanded the same tribute from them as he exacted from the Makhosi and the Batlokas, and it was their refusal to pay this that had brought them into their present contention.
Mochuri struck me as one of the cleanest Bechuana towns that I ever saw. It is situated in a depression between two hills, being surrounded by a high thorn-fence, and having all the enclosures about its farmsteads well cemented and neatly preserved. Until 1876 the Bakhatlas were the only central Bechuana tribe that cultivated tobacco and used it as an article of commerce. Besides being agriculturists, they spend a good deal of their time in tanning leather. Nearly all of them speak Dutch.
MISSION HOUSE IN MOLOPOLOLE.
Here I had to part with Mr. Mackenzie and the other missionaries. It was with a heavy heart that I said good-bye. They had to turn off for about thirty miles to the east to go to Molopolole; I had to continue my way south towards Chwene-Chwene. As a farewell kindness, Mr. Mackenzie induced the chief to let me have a couple of young lions.
After leaving the valley of the Notuany I had to cross a wide plain, where the soil was salt, and consequently the growth of grass was very scanty. I did not stay longer than was absolutely necessary at Chwene-Chwene, as it was suffering so much from drought that holes thirty feet deep had to be dug in the rocky beds of the spruits before any water could be obtained. While we were halting next upon the northern slope of the Dwars Mountains, we incautiously allowed my two little lions to make their escape. It took us two hours to catch them; nor could we put them back into their cage again without getting our hands scratched and bitten considerably.
Instead of proceeding south-west from Brackfontein through Buisport, I turned due south across the bushveldt to Linokana, noticing on the way that the little Morupa stream quite lost itself in the shallow depressions of its bed, so that it is only after heavy rain that it makes its way over the grass plains to the Great Marico.
Mr. Jensen welcomed me most cordially when I arrived at Linokana on the 8th. I was also highly delighted to have a visit from my old friend Eberwald, who had come all the way from the Leydenburg gold-fields on purpose to see me. He was of great assistance to me while I remained in the place, and proceeded with me on my way south. He did his best to acknowledge the hospitality that he received from Mr. Jensen by working for him in his garden.