for the influence of women over their husbands, even
when they are black.
Sebele, the heir apparent, does all the executive
work of the country now, and the old man is left at
home to chew his sugar-cane and smoke his pipe.
Around the villages and in the hollow below the
native gardens or fields are very fertile ; maize, kaflir
corn, sugar-cane, grow here in abundance, and out
of the tall reeds black women came running to look
at us as we passed by, whose daily duty it is at this
season of the year to act as scarecrows, and save
their crops from the birds. Beneath the corn and
mealies they grow gourds and beans, and thereby
thoroughly exhaust the soil, which, after a season or
two, is left fallow for a while; and if the ground
becomes too bad around a town they think nothing
of moving their abodes elsewhere, a town being rarely
established in one place for more than fifty years.
Prom Sechele’s town to Khama’s old capital,
Shoshong, is a weary journey of over a hundred and
thirty miles through the Kalahari Desert, and through
that everlasting bush of mimosa thorn, which rose
like impenetrable walls on either side of us. Along this
road there is hardly any rising ground; hence it is
impossible to see anything for more than a few yards
around one, unless one is willing to brave the dangers
of penetrating the bush, returning to the camp with
tattered garments and ruffled temper, if return you
can, for when only a few yards from camp it is quite
possible to become hopelessly lost, and many are the
stories of deaths and disappearances in this way, and
»of days of misery spent by travellers in this bush
■without food or shelter, unable to retrace their steps.
■ The impenetrableness of this jungle in some places
I is almost unbelievable: the bushes of ‘ wait-a-bit ’ thorn
I are absolutely impossible to get through; every tree
I of every description about here seems armed by
I nature with its own defence, and lurking in the grass
| is the £ grapple plant,’ the Harpagophytumprocumbens,
| whose crablike claws tear the skin in a most pain-
i fully subtle way. The mimosas of many different
I species which form the bulk of the trees in this bush
[are also terribly thorny; the Dutch call them camel
| thorns, because the giraffes, or, as they call them, the
■camel leopards, feed thereon. Why the Dutch should
I be so perverse in the naming of animals I never can
f discover; to them the hyaena is the wolf, the leopard
|is the tiger, the kori-bustard is the peacock, and
many similar anomalies occur.
The botanist or the naturalist might here enjoy
every hour of his day. The flowers are lovely, and
animal life is here seen in many unaccustomed forms;
there are the quaint, spire-like ant-hills tapering to
pinnacles of fifteen feet in height; the clustered nests
of the ‘ family bird,’ where hundreds live together
m a sort of exaggerated honeycomb; the huge
jBpllow and black spiders, which weave their webs
from tree to tree of material like the fresh silk of the
silkworm, which, with the dew and the morning sun
upon it, looks like a gauze curtain suspended in the
|j|r, There are, too, the deadly puff adders, the
pg h t adders, and things creeping innumerable, the
c