o sit and wait helplessly until God
gives them rain from heaven, entertain the more comfortable idea that
they can help themselves by a variety of preparations, such as
charcoal made of burned bats, inspissated renal deposit of the mountain
cony--'Hyrax capensis'--(which, by the way, is used, in the form of
pills, as a good antispasmodic, under the name of "stone-sweat"*), the
internal parts of different animals--as jackals' livers, baboons' and
lions' hearts, and hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows--serpents'
skins and vertebrae, and every kind of tuber, bulb, root, and plant
to be found in the country. Although you disbelieve their efficacy
in charming the clouds to pour out their refreshing treasures, yet,
conscious that civility is useful every where, you kindly state that
you think they are mistaken as to their power. The rain-doctor selects a
particular bulbous root, pounds it, and administers a cold infusion to
a sheep, which in five minutes afterward expires in convulsions. Part of
the same bulb is converted into smoke, and ascends toward the sky;
rain follows in a day or two. The inference is obvious. Were we as much
harassed by droughts, the logic would be irresistible in England in
1857.

* The name arises from its being always voided on one spot,
in the manner practiced by others of the rhinocerontine family;
and, by the action of the sun, it becomes a black, pitchy substance.

As the Bakwains believed that there must be some connection between
the presence of "God's Word" in their town and these successive and
distressing droughts, they looked with no good will at the church bell,
but still they invariably treated us with kindness and respect. I am not
aware of ever having had an enemy in the tribe. The only avowed cause of
dislike was expressed by a very influential and sensible man, the uncle
of Sechele. "We like you as well as if you had been born among us; you
are the only white man we can become familiar with (thoaela); but we
wish you to give up that everlasting preaching and praying; we can not
become familiar with that at all. You see we never get rain, while those
tribes who never pray as we do obtain abundance." This was a fact; and
we often saw it raining on the hills ten miles off, while it would not
look at us "even with one eye". If the Prince of the power of the air
had no hand in scorching us up, I fear I often gave him the credit of
doing so.

As for the rain-makers, they