gth we stopped just opposite a beautiful fortified kopje[*]
perforated by secret caves where the ammunition of the tribe is hidden.
No stranger is allowed to enter these caves, or even to ascend the
kopje, though they do not object to one's inspecting some of the other
fortifications. Dismounting from our wearied horses, we passed through a
cattle kraal and came into the presence of "Swasi," Secocoeni's uncle,
a fat old fellow who was busily engaged in braying a skin. Nearly every
male Basutu one meets, be he high or low, is braying a hide of some
sort, either by rubbing or by masticating it. It is a curious sight to
come across some twenty of these fellows, every one of them twisting or
chewing away.

[*] Afterwards stormed in the attack on Secocoeni's town by
Sir Garnet Wolseley.

Swasi was a sort of master of the household; his duty it was to receive
strangers and see that they were properly looked after; so, after
shaking hands with us furiously (he was a wonderful fellow to shake
hands), he conducted us to our hut. It stood in a good-sized courtyard
beautifully paved with a sort of concrete of limestone which looked very
clean and white, and surrounded by a hedge of reeds and sticks tightly
tied together, inside which ran a slightly raised bench, also made of
limestone. The hut itself was neatly thatched, the thatch projecting
several feet, so as to form a covering to a narrow verandah that ran all
round it. Inside it was commodious, and ornamented after the Egyptian
style with straight and spiral lines, painted on with some kind of red
ochre, and floored with a polished substance. Certainly these huts are
as much superior to those of the Zulus as those who dwell in them are
inferior to that fine race. What the Basutus gain in art and handiness
they lose in manliness and gentlemanly feeling.

We had just laid ourselves down on the grass mats in the courtyard--for
it was too hot to go into the hut--thoroughly exhausted with our day's
work and the heat, when in came two men, each of them dragging a fine
indigenous sheep. They were accompanied by Makurupiji, who brought us a
message from Secocoeni to the effect that he, the Chief, sent to greet
us, the great Chiefs; that he sent us also a morsel to eat, lest we
should be hungry in his house. It was but a morsel--it should have been
an ox, for great Chiefs should eat much meat--but he himself was pinched
with hunger, his belt was drawn very tight by the Boe