ote 9: See further as to this primary assembly the remarks on the
Basuto _Pitso_ in Chapter XX.]

[Footnote 10: Those who are curious on this subject may consult Mr.
Frazer's _Golden Bough_, and the late Mr. Robertson Smith's _Religion of
the Semites_, where many interesting and profoundly suggestive facts
regarding it are collected.]

[Footnote 11: As in Homer's day sudden deaths were attributed to the
arrows of Apollo or Artemis.]

[Footnote 12: M. Junod, a Swiss missionary at Delagoa Bay, who made a
careful study of the Tonga tribes, told me that they sometimes use the
word _shikimbo_, which properly denotes the ghost of an ancestor, to
denote a higher unseen power. And I was informed that the Basutos will
pray to the "lesser Molimos," the ghost of their ancestors, to ask the
great Molimo to send rain.]

[Footnote 13: This Mlimo--whether the name is properly applicable to the
divinity, whatever it was, or to the prophet, seems doubtful--belonged
to the Makalakas, but was revered by the Matabili, who conquered them.]

[Footnote 14: It need hardly be said that they have a full belief in the
power of certain men to assume the forms of beasts. I was told that a
leading British official was held to be in the habit, when travelling in
the veldt, of changing himself, after his morning tub, into a rat, and
creeping into his waggon, whence he presently re-emerged in human
shape.]

[Footnote 15: Several collections have been made of these tales. The
first is that of Bishop Callaway, the latest that of my friend Mr.
Jacottet, a Swiss missionary in Basutoland, who has published a number
of Basuto stories in his _Contes Populaires des Bassoutos_, and of
Barotse stories in another book.]

CHAPTER XI

THE EUROPEANS IN SOUTH AFRICA TILL 1854

It is no less true of South Africa than it is of the old countries of
Europe that to understand the temper of the people, the working of their
government, the nature of the political problems which they have to
solve, one must know something of their history. South Africa has had a
great deal of history, especially in the present century, and there are
few places in which recollections of the past are more powerful factors
in the troubles of the present. In the short sketch I propose to give I
shall advert only to the chief events, and particularly to those whose
importance is still felt and which have done most to determine the
relations of the European races to one another.