the delinquent settled the
matter by giving one of his own oxen in lieu of the lost one. A headman
from near Linyanti came with a complaint that all his people had run off,
owing to the "hunger." Sekeletu said, "You must not be left to grow lean
alone, some of them must come back to you." He had thus an order to
compel their return, if he chose to put it in force. Families frequently
leave their own headman and flee to another village, and sometimes a
whole village decamps by night, leaving the headman by himself. Sekeletu
rarely interfered with the liberty of the subject to choose his own
headman, and, as it is often the fault of the latter which causes the
people to depart, it is punishment enough for him to be left alone.
Flagrant disobedience to the chief's orders is punished with death. A
Moshubia man was ordered to cut some reeds for Sekeletu: he went off, and
hid himself for two days instead. For this he was doomed to die, and was
carried in a canoe to the middle of the river, choked, and tossed into
the stream. The spectators hooted the executioners, calling out to them
that they too would soon be carried out and strangled. Occasionally when
a man is sent to beat an offender, he tells him his object, returns, and
assures the chief he has nearly killed him. The transgressor then keeps
for a while out of sight, and the matter is forgotten. The river here
teems with monstrous crocodiles, and women are frequently, while drawing
water, carried off by these reptiles.

We met a venerable warrior, sole survivor, probably, of the Mantatee host
which threatened to invade the colony in 1824. He retained a vivid
recollection of their encounter with the Griquas: "As we looked at the
men and horses, puffs of smoke arose, and some of us dropped down dead!"
"Never saw anything like it in my life, a man's brains lying in one place
and his body in another!" They could not understand what was killing
them; a ball struck a man's shield at an angle; knocked his arm out of
joint at the shoulder; and leaving a mark, or burn, as he said, on the
shield, killed another man close by. We saw the man with his shoulder
still dislocated. Sebetuane was present at the fight, and had an exalted
opinion of the power of white people ever afterwards.

The ancient costume of the Makololo consisted of the skin of a lamb, kid,
jackal, ocelot, or other small animal, worn round and below the loins:
and in cold weather a kaross, or skin ma