ter. The rich show
kindness to the poor in expectation of services, and a poor person who
has no relatives will seldom be supplied even with water in illness,
and, when dead, will be dragged out to be devoured by the hyaenas
instead of being buried. Relatives alone will condescend to touch a dead
body. It would be easy to enumerate instances of inhumanity which I have
witnessed. An interesting-looking girl came to my wagon one day in a
state of nudity, and almost a skeleton. She was a captive from another
tribe, and had been neglected by the man who claimed her. Having
supplied her wants, I made inquiry for him, and found that he had been
unsuccessful in raising a crop of corn, and had no food to give her. I
volunteered to take her; but he said he would allow me to feed her
and make her fat, and then take her away. I protested against his
heartlessness; and, as he said he could "not part with his child," I
was precluded from attending to her wants. In a day or two she was lost
sight of. She had gone out a little way from the town, and, being too
weak to return, had been cruelly left to perish. Another day I saw
a poor boy going to the water to drink, apparently in a starving
condition. This case I brought before the chief in council, and found
that his emaciation was ascribed to disease and want combined. He was
not one of the Makololo, but a member of a subdued tribe. I showed them
that any one professing to claim a child, and refusing proper nutriment,
would be guilty of his death. Sekeletu decided that the owner of this
boy should give up his alleged right rather than destroy the child. When
I took him he was so far gone as to be in the cold stage of starvation,
but was soon brought round by a little milk given three or four times a
day. On leaving Linyanti I handed him over to the charge of his chief,
Sekeletu, who feeds his servants very well. On the other hand, I have
seen instances in which both men and women have taken up little orphans
and carefully reared them as their own children. By a selection of cases
of either kind, it would not be difficult to make these people appear
excessively good or uncommonly bad.

I still possessed some of the coffee which I had brought from Angola,
and some of the sugar which I had left in my wagon. So long as the sugar
lasted, Sekeletu favored me with his company at meals; but the sugar
soon came to a close. The Makololo, as formerly mentioned, were well
acquainted with the sug