to
respond to the first application.

Our men, accustomed to our ways, thought that the English system of
paying a man for his labour was the only correct one, and some even said
it would be better to live under a government where life and labour were
more secure and valuable than here. While with us, they always conducted
themselves with propriety during Divine service, and not only maintained
decorum themselves, but insisted on other natives who might be present
doing the same. When Moshobotwane, the Batoka chief, came on one
occasion with a number of his men, they listened in silence to the
reading of the Bible in the Makololo tongue; but, as soon as we all knelt
down to pray, they commenced a vigorous clapping of hands, their mode of
asking a favour. Our indignant Makololo soon silenced their noisy
accompaniment, and looked with great contempt on this display of
ignorance. Nearly all our men had learned to repeat the Lord's Prayer
and the Apostles' Creed in their own language, and felt rather proud of
being able to do so; and when they reached home, they liked to recite
them to groups of admiring friends. Their ideas of right and wrong
differ in no respect from our own, except in their professed inability to
see how it can be improper for a man to have more than one wife. A year
or two ago several of the wives of those who had been absent with us
petitioned the chief for leave to marry again. They thought that it was
of no use waiting any longer, their husbands must be dead; but Sekeletu
refused permission; he himself had bet a number of oxen that the Doctor
would return with their husbands, and he had promised the absent men that
their wives should be kept for them. The impatient spouses had therefore
to wait a little longer. Some of them, however, eloped with other men;
the wife of Mantlanyane, for instance, ran off and left his little boy
among strangers. Mantlanyane was very angry when he heard of it, not
that he cared much about her deserting him, for he had two other wives at
Tette, but he was indignant at her abandoning his boy.

CHAPTER VIII.

Life amongst the Makololo--Return journey--Native hospitality--A canoe
voyage on the Zambesi.

While we were at Sesheke, an ox was killed by a crocodile; a man found
the carcass floating in the river, and appropriated the meat. When the
owner heard of this, he requested him to come before the chief, as he
meant to complain of him; rather than go,