nature peaceful and mild, a race with strong pastoral
habits, who have lived for years in dread of Matabele
raids; consequently their respect for a chief like
Khama—who has actually on one occasion repulsed
the foe, and who has established peace, prosperity,
and justice in all his borders—is unbounded, and his
word is law.
Khama pervades everything in his town. He is
always on horseback, visiting the fields, the stores,
and the outlying kraals. He has a word for every
one ; he - calls every woman $ my daughter,’ and
every man ‘ my son ; ’ he pats the little children on
the head. He is a veritable father of his people, a
curious and unaccountable outcrop of mental power
and integrity amongst a degraded and powerless race.
His early history and struggles with his father and
brothers are thrilling in the extreme, and his later
development extraordinary. Perhaps he may be
said to be the only negro living whose biography
would repay the writing.
The blending of two sets of ideas, the advance of
the. new and the remains of the old, are curiously
conspicuous at Palapwe, and perhaps the women illustrate
this better than the men. On your evening
walk you may meet the leading black ladies of the
place, parasol in hand, with hideous dresses of gaudy
cottons, hats with flowers and feathers, and displaying
as. they walk the airs and graces of self-consciousness.
A little further on you meet the women of the
lower orders returning from the fields, with baskets
on their heads filled with green pumpkins, bright
yellow mealy pods, and rods of sugar cane. A skin
' caross is thrown over their shoulders, and the rest of
their mahogany-coloured bodies is nude, save for a
leopard-skin loin-cloth, and armlets and necklaces of
bright blue beads. Why is it that civilisation is
permitted to destroy all that is picturesque P Surely
we, of the nineteenth century, have much to answer
for in this respect, and the missionaries who teach
races, accustomed to nudity by heredity, that it is a
good and proper thing to wear clothes are responsible
for three evils—firstly, the appearance of lung diseases
amongst them; secondly, the spread of vermin
amongst them ; and thirdly, the disappearance from
amongst them of inherent and natural modesty.
It had been arranged that on our departure from
Palapwe we should take twenty-five of Khama’s men
to.act as excavators at the ruins of Zimbabwe. One
morning, at sunrise, when we were just rising from
our waggons, and indulging in our matutinal yawns,
Khama’s arrival was announced. The chief walked
in front, dignified and smart, dressed in well-made
boots, trousers with a correct seam down each side,
: an irreproachable coat, a billycock hat, and gloves.
If Khama has a vice it is that of dress, and, curiously
enough,- this vice has developed more markedly in his
son and heir, who is to all intents and purposes a
black masher and nothing else. Khama is a, neatly-
Snaae, active man of sixty, who might, easily pass for
twenty years younger; his face sparkles with intelligence
; he is, moreover, shrewd, and looks carefully
after the interests of his people, who in days scarcely