operty--African Housebuilding and Housekeeping--Mode of Spending
the Day--Scarcity of Food--Locusts--Edible Frogs--Scavenger
Beetle--Continued Hostility of the Boers--The Journey
north--Preparations--Fellow-travelers--The Kalahari Desert--
Vegetation--Watermelons--The Inhabitants--The Bushmen--Their nomad Mode
of Life--Appearance--The Bakalahari--Their Love for Agriculture and
for domestic Animals--Timid Character--Mode of obtaining Water--Female
Water-suckers--The Desert--Water hidden.

Another adverse influence with which the mission had to contend was
the vicinity of the Boers of the Cashan Mountains, otherwise named
"Magaliesberg". These are not to be counfounded with the Cape colonists,
who sometimes pass by the name. The word Boer simply means "farmer", and
is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally
the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober,
industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who
have fled from English law on various pretexts, and have been joined
by English deserters and every other variety of bad character in their
distant localities, are unfortunately of a very different stamp. The
great objection many of the Boers had, and still have, to English law,
is that it makes no distinction between black men and white. They
felt aggrieved by their supposed losses in the emancipation of their
Hottentot slaves, and determined to erect themselves into a republic, in
which they might pursue, without molestation, the "proper treatment of
the blacks". It is almost needless to add that the "proper treatment"
has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, namely,
compulsory unpaid labor.

One section of this body, under the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter,
penetrated the interior as far as the Cashan Mountains, whence a Zulu
or Caffre chief, named Mosilikatze, had been expelled by the well-known
Caffre Dingaan; and a glad welcome was given them by the Bechuana
tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. They
came with the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the Bechuanas
soon found, as they expressed it, "that Mosilikatze was cruel to his
enemies, and kind to those he conquered; but that the Boers destroyed
their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." The tribes who still
retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labor
of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, r