angwato dwell there Khama
reigns. A large proportion of them dwell in or near Palapshwye. Born
about 1830, he is by far the most remarkable Kafir now living in South
Africa, for he has shown a tact, prudence, and tenacity of purpose which
would have done credit to a European statesman. He was converted to
Christianity while still a boy, and had much persecution to endure at
the hands of his heathen father, who at last banished him for refusing
to take a second wife. What is not less remarkable, he has carried his
Christianity into practice, evincing both a sense of honour as well as a
humanity which has made him the special protector of the old and the
weak, and even of the Bushmen who serve the Bamangwato. Regarded as
fighters, his people are far inferior to the Matabili, and he was often
in danger of being overpowered by the fierce and rapacious Lo Bengula.
As early as 1862 he crossed assagais with and defeated a Matabili _impi_
(war-band), earning the praise of the grim Mosilikatze, who said, "Khama
is a man. There is no other man among the Bamangwato." Though frequently
thereafter threatened and sometimes attacked, he succeeded, by his
skilful policy, in avoiding any serious war until the fall of Lo Bengula
in 1893. Seeing the tide of white conquest rising all round him, he has
had a difficult problem to face, and it is not surprising that he has
been less eager to welcome the Company and its railway than those who
considered him the white man's friend had expected. The coming of the
whites means not only the coming of liquor, but the gradual occupation
of the large open tracts where the natives have hunted and pastured
their cattle, with a consequent change in their mode of life, which,
inevitable as it may be, a patriotic chief must naturally wish to delay.

Palapshwye, the largest native town south of the Zambesi, is an immense
mass of huts, planted without the smallest attempt at order over the
sandy hill slope, some two square miles in extent. The huts are small,
with low walls of clay and roofs of grass, so that from a distance the
place looks like a wilderness of beehives. Each of the chief men has his
own hut and those of his wives inclosed in a rough fence of thorns, or
perhaps of prickly-pear, and between the groups of huts lie open spaces
of sand or dusty tracks. In the middle of the town close to the huts of
Khama himself, who, however, being a Christian, has but one wife, stands
the great kraal or _kothl