_To T. L----._ DEAR ---- Some time ago, during a conversation about Basutoland, you suggested that I should write an account of the country and its inhabitants, and were kind enough to give me many valuable hints as to how I should collect and arrange my information. As you know, we came out to South Africa in January, 1891, and went up to Basutoland in the following April. We both liked the country from the first, and I soon became interested in the people. To enable myself to understand them better, I began to study the language, which I can now speak fairly well. The fact of my husband being a Government official gave me many opportunities of acquiring information, and, as we have been moved about from one station to another, having had six "homes" in the ten years of our sojourn there, I have naturally seen a considerable portion of the country, and come in contact with many different specimens of the Basuto race. I have made a practice of visiting the different villages, and of seeing as much as possible of the inner life of the people, with the result that I have at length put my impressions on paper, in the hope that they may be found of some value to those who take an interest in native habits and customs. For the kind help and encouragement I have received from you, I am deeply grateful, and hope you will allow me to dedicate to you this small volume, which, without your aid, would never have been written. * * * * * To those who have most kindly helped me with information, I tender my grateful thanks. MINNIE MARTIN. CHAPTER I. OUTLINE OF BASUTO HISTORY--MOSHESHUE--LETSIE--LEROTHOLI--SCENERY-- CLIMATE. Were I to attempt to give a complete history of the Basuto I should fail utterly, for my own personal knowledge of South Africa only extends over the last ten years. Although several books have been written on the subject by missionaries, the Basuto as a nation do not seem capable of giving one much reliable information beyond the time of Tokoana Makhautha, the grandfather of Mosheshue. Here and there through the country old men are to be found who possess marvellous stores of knowledge, but how much it can be relied upon, would be a question impossible to answer satisfactorily. My readers will, I hope, therefore content themselves with a brief sketch of Basuto history from about the middle of the eighteenth century. Tokoana Makhautha was chief at that time of a considerable tract of country in and around Witsies' Hoek. He seems to have been a stern, ambitious man, with little of the "milk of human kindness" in his character.