g-glass--Mode
of preparing the Skins of Oxen for Mantles and for Shields--Throwing
the Spear.

The whole population of Linyanti, numbering between six and seven
thousand souls, turned out en masse to see the wagons in motion. They
had never witnessed the phenomenon before, we having on the former
occasion departed by night. Sekeletu, now in power, received us in what
is considered royal style, setting before us a great number of pots of
boyaloa, the beer of the country. These were brought by women, and each
bearer takes a good draught of the beer when she sets it down, by way of
"tasting", to show that there is no poison.

The court herald, an old man who occupied the post also in Sebituane's
time, stood up, and after some antics, such as leaping, and shouting at
the top of his voice, roared out some adulatory sentences, as, "Don't I
see the white man? Don't I see the comrade of Sebituane? Don't I see the
father of Sekeletu?"--"We want sleep."--"Give your son sleep, my lord,"
etc., etc. The perquisites of this man are the heads of all the cattle
slaughtered by the chief, and he even takes a share of the tribute
before it is distributed and taken out of the kotla. He is expected to
utter all the proclamations, call assemblies, keep the kotla clean, and
the fire burning every evening, and when a person is executed in public
he drags away the body.

I found Sekeletu a young man of eighteen years of age, of that dark
yellow or coffee-and-milk color, of which the Makololo are so proud,
because it distinguishes them considerably from the black tribes on
the rivers. He is about five feet seven in height, and neither so
good looking nor of so much ability as his father was, but is equally
friendly to the English. Sebituane installed his daughter Mamochisane
into the chieftainship long before his death, but, with all his
acuteness, the idea of her having a husband who should not be her lord
did not seem to enter his mind. He wished to make her his successor,
probably in imitation of some of the negro tribes with whom he had come
into contact; but, being of the Bechuana race, he could not look upon
the husband except as the woman's lord; so he told her all the men
were hers--she might take any one, but ought to keep none. In fact, he
thought she might do with the men what he could do with the women; but
these men had other wives; and, according to a saying in the country,
"the tongues of women can not be governed," they ma