endeavoring to dissuade him from the attempt, on account of the
knowledge I possessed of the governor's policy, he put the pointed
question, "Will the queen not listen to me, supposing I should reach
her?" I replied, "I believe she would listen, but the difficulty is
to get to her." "Well, I shall reach her," expressed his final
determination. Others explained the difficulties more fully, but nothing
could shake his resolution. When he reached Bloemfontein he found the
English army just returning from a battle with the Basutos, in which
both parties claimed the victory, and both were glad that a second
engagement was not tried. Our officers invited Sechele to dine with
them, heard his story, and collected a handsome sum of money to enable
him to pursue his journey to England. The commander refrained from
noticing him, as a single word in favor of the restoration of the
children of Sechele would have been a virtual confession of the failure
of his own policy at the very outset. Sechele proceeded as far as the
Cape; but his resources being there expended, he was obliged to return
to his own country, one thousand miles distant, without accomplishing
the object of his journey.

On his return he adopted a mode of punishment which he had seen in the
colony, namely, making criminals work on the public roads. And he has
since, I am informed, made himself the missionary to his own people.
He is tall, rather corpulent, and has more of the negro feature than
common, but has large eyes. He is very dark, and his people swear by
"Black Sechele". He has great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent
speaker. Great numbers of the tribes formerly living under the Boers
have taken refuge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he
was before the attack on Kolobeng.

Having parted with Sechele, we skirted along the Kalahari Desert, and
sometimes within its borders, giving the Boers a wide berth. A
larger fall of rain than usual had occurred in 1852, and that was the
completion of a cycle of eleven or twelve years, at which the same
phenomenon is reported to have happened on three occasions. An unusually
large crop of melons had appeared in consequence. We had the pleasure
of meeting with Mr. J. Macabe returning from Lake Ngami, which he had
succeeded in reaching by going right across the Desert from a point
a little to the south of Kolobeng. The accounts of the abundance of
watermelons were amply confirmed by this energetic