We saw a few of these children of the desert in our progress northwards; they are timid and diffident in the extreme, always avoiding the haunts of the white man, and always wandering hither and thither where rain and water may be found. On their shoulders they carry a bark quiver filled with poisoned arrows to kill their game. They produce fire by dexterously rubbing two sticks together to make a spark. At nightfall they cut grass and branches to make a shelter from the wind; they eat snakes, tortoises, and roots which they dig up with sharp bits of wood, and the contents of their food bags is revolting to behold. They pay tribute in kind to the above-mentioned chiefs—skins, feathers, tusks, or the mahatla berries used for making beer—and if these things are not forthcoming they take a fine-grown boy and present him to the chief as his slave. Sechele is the chief of the Ba-quaina, or children of the quaina, or crocodile. Their siboko, or tribal object of veneration, is the crocodile, which animal they will not kill or touch under any provocation whatsoever. The Ba-quaina are one of the most powerful of the Bechuanaland feud tribes, and it often occurred to me, Can the name Bechuanaland, for which nobody can give a satisfactory derivation, and of which the natives themselves are entirely ignorant, be a corruption of this name? There have been worse corruptions perpetrated by Dutch and English pioneers in savage lands, and Ba-quainaland would have a derivation, whereas Bechuanaland has none. Sechele’s capital is on the hills above the river Molopolole, quite a flourishing place, or rather group of places, on a high hill, with a curious valley or kloof beneath it, where the missionary settlement is by the river banks. Many villages of daub huts are scattered over the hills amongst the red boulders and green vegetation. In the largest, in quite a European-looking house, Sechele lives. Once this house was fitted up for him in European style; it contained a glass chandelier, a sideboard, a gazogene, and a table. In those days Sechele was a good man, and was led by his wife to church; but, alas! this good lady died, and her place was supplied by a rank heathen, who would have none of her predecessor’s innovations. Now Sechele is very old and very crippled, and he lies amid the wreck of all his European grandeur; chandelier, sideboard, gazogene, are all in ruins like himself, and he is as big a heathen and as big a sinner as ever wore a crown. So much for the influence of women over their husbands, even when they are black.