icers, Captains Codrington and Webb, to serve for their return
journey south, had been carried off also. On their return these officers
found the skeletons of the Bakwains where they expected to find their
own goods. All the corn, clothing, and furniture of the people, too,
had been consumed in the flames which the Boers had forced the subject
tribes to apply to the town during the fight, so that its inhabitants
were now literally starving.

Sechele had given orders to his people not to commit any act of revenge
pending his visit to the Queen of England; but some of the young men
ventured to go to meet a party of Boers returning from hunting, and,
as the Boers became terrified and ran off, they brought their wagons to
Litubaruba. This seems to have given the main body of Boers an idea that
the Bakwains meant to begin a guerrilla war upon them. This "Caffre war"
was, however, only in embryo, and not near that stage of development in
which the natives have found out that the hide-and-seek system is the
most successful.

The Boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace! I,
being present, heard the condition: "Sechele's children must be restored
to him." I never saw men so completely and unconsciously in a trap as
these four Boers were. Strong parties of armed Bakwains occupied every
pass in the hills and gorges around; and had they not promised much more
than they intended, or did perform, that day would have been their last.
The commandant Scholz had appropriated the children of Sechele to be his
own domestic slaves. I was present when one little boy, Khari, son of
Sechele, was returned to his mother; the child had been allowed to
roll into the fire, and there were three large unbound open sores on
different parts of his body. His mother and the women received him with
a flood of silent tears.

Slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places. The Boers
assert that they are the best of masters, and that, if the English had
possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have received much worse
treatment than they did: what that would have been it is difficult to
imagine. I took down the names of some scores of boys and girls, many of
whom I knew as our scholars; but I could not comfort the weeping mothers
by any hope of their ever returning from slavery.

The Bechuanas are universally much attached to children. A little child
toddling near a party of men while they are eating is sure to get
a ha