CHAPTER II. APPEARANCE OF BASUTO—ALBINOS—NATIVE VILLAGES—HUTS—MANNER OF LIVING—DRESS—ORNAMENTS.
The Basuto are a fine, well-proportioned race, though as a rule the men are not so tall nor so well-built as the Zulus.
They are of a soft brown colour, with less protruding lips, and more regular features than the Colonial Kaffir, and with far pleasanter expressions; graceful and upright, with considerable intelligence, and remarkably amiable. As a nation they are wonderfully honest and trustworthy. They are far more "tillers of the soil" than men of battle, preferring to live at peace with their neighbours to treading the war path.
The women are good-natured and docile, slaves to their lord and master, acknowledging his complete power and superiority over them with perfect contentment. They naturally possess a certain amount of vanity, and, to gratify it, will endure no small amount of pain in tattooing their faces, but in this the men are not behindhand. As a rule, both sexes are devoted to their children, who lead healthy, happy young lives, free from care, not cumbered with over-much clothing, and with few duties or restraints.
A strange feature of this race is the number of Albinos to be found in it, and, since the white man became a familiar object to the Basuto, these poor hideous creatures are, by many of their more fortunate brethren, looked upon as quite lovely specimens of humanity. I know one policeman, who told me with great pride that he had married a white wife, who was very pretty. Would I not go to see her? I went, not quite understanding, for I had only been a short time in the country, and it was with great difficulty that I was able to disguise my feeling of repulsion. She was indeed hideous, poor creature, yet she quite gave herself the airs of a beauty, and smiled contentedly upon me, little dreaming of the feelings she was awakening. Since then I have seen a good many more, but never have I been able to conquer my strong dislike to these most unnatural-looking beings. There is one grave fault about a Mosuto, which is that he has no idea of truthfulness. To him it is no crime to tell a lie—in fact, he finds it an absolutely necessary virtue. It is at times quite ludicrous to hear the solemn and, to all seeming, most truthful account given you about some small episode by an open-faced, honest-looking Mosuto, when all the time you are in a position to know that there is hardly a word of truth in what he is saying. I have tried to make them understand how wrong it is to tell such falsehoods, but, beyond a half shame-faced and wholly mischievous smile, my words never seemed to have much effect.
The Basuto usually build their villages on the side of a mountain or kopje, selecting situations which offer many natural means of defence. Their huts are generally circular, sod-wall buildings, with thatch roofs, and outside each hut, as a rule, is a sort of palisade of reeds called a "skerm," in which all the cooking and frequently the eating also takes place. When a man wanted to build a hut, in the days before they adopted more civilized modes, and even now, in the more remote parts of the country, he took a stick, to which he fastened a strip of ox-hide, stuck the other end of the strip firmly in the ground with another peg, and, with the stick in his hand, drew a complete circle; on this line he raised the walls of his dwelling; these are made of square sods, roughly dug off the surface of the ground and laid one on the top of the other until the required height is reached. The walls are then smeared over, inside and out, with wet clay, which is the women's work. The woodwork of the roof is then laid on. It consists of branches of trees interlaced and fastened securely at the top with grass rope. On this the reeds are thickly laid and stitched down to the woodwork by more grass rope. The inner walls of the hut are often ornamented by rough scrollwork in different coloured clays. A small aperture serves as window, and over the entrance is hung a reed mat, made by lashing together with the sinews of cattle a number of dried reeds. The floors are of mud, beaten down till perfectly hard and fairly even. They are smeared over afresh every week or ten days, in order to preserve them, and also as a matter of cleanliness, much as an English housewife scrubs her floors. In the more wealthy dwellings the floors are from time to time smeared over with bullock's blood. This gives them a dark, slightly polished appearance, and makes them very much harder on the surface than those of the poorer individuals, who have to content themselves with a mixture of clay and manure from the cattle kraals. The original furniture of a native hut consisted of a mat, similar to the one hung over the entrance; a few skins, which answered the purpose of clothing by day and bedding by night; a few earthenware pots and wooden spurtles, or spoons, one or two horn spoons, often very prettily carved; and neat, strong baskets of various shapes and sizes, but chiefly round, and somewhat like an enlarged basin. The cooking was all done in the earthenware pots until European traders introduced iron pots and kettles.
The chief or headman lives in the centre circle of the village. All the huts in the older villages are built in circles, one within another. This was done as a means of guarding more securely the chief and his family. As a rule, the chief has one or two buildings for his own exclusive use, while his wives' huts are built either in a row or round his own larger, more highly-finished dwellings. Each wife has a separate hut, which is her own little kingdom.