it of having
taught the tribe to kill Boers! My house, which had stood perfectly
secure for years under the protection of the natives, was plundered in
revenge. English gentlemen, who had come in the footsteps of Mr. Cumming
to hunt in the country beyond, and had deposited large quantities of
stores in the same keeping, and upward of eighty head of cattle as
relays for the return journeys, were robbed of all, and, when they came
back to Kolobeng, found the skeletons of the guardians strewed all over
the place. The books of a good library--my solace in our solitude--were
not taken away, but handfuls of the leaves were torn out and scattered
over the place. My stock of medicines was smashed; and all our furniture
and clothing carried off and sold at public auction to pay the expenses
of the foray.

I do not mention these things by way of making a pitiful wail over my
losses, nor in order to excite commiseration; for, though I do feel
sorry for the loss of lexicons, dictionaries, &c., which had been the
companions of my boyhood, yet, after all, the plundering only set me
entirely free for my expedition to the north, and I have never since had
a moment's concern for any thing I left behind. The Boers resolved to
shut up the interior, and I determined to open the country, and we shall
see who have been most successful in resolution, they or I.

A short sketch of African housekeeping may not prove uninteresting to
the reader. The entire absence of shops led us to make every thing we
needed from the raw materials. You want bricks to build a house, and
must forthwith proceed to the field, cut down a tree, and saw it into
planks to make the brick-moulds; the materials for doors and windows,
too, are standing in the forest; and, if you want to be respected by
the natives, a house of decent dimensions, costing an immense amount of
manual labor, must be built. The people can not assist you much; for,
though most willing to labor for wages, the Bakwains have a curious
inability to make or put things square: like all Bechuanas, their
dwellings are made round. In the case of three large houses, erected by
myself at different times, every brick and stick had to be put square by
my own right hand.

Having got the meal ground, the wife proceeds to make it into bread; an
extempore oven is often constructed by scooping out a large hole in an
anthill, and using a slab of stone for a door. Another plan, which might
be adopted by the Austr