many as 28,000
went out--to work in the mines at Kimberley and on the Witwatersrand,
and they bring back savings, which have done much to increase the
prosperity of the tribe. At present they seem fairly contented and
peaceable. The land belongs to the nation, and all may freely turn their
cattle on the untilled parts. Fields, however, are allotted to each
householder by the chief, to be tilled, and the tenant, protected by
public opinion, retains them so long as he tills them. He cannot sell
them, but they will pass to his children. Ordinary administration, which
consists mainly in the allotment and management of land, is left to the
chief; as also ordinary jurisdiction, both civil and criminal. The
present tendency is for the disposing power of the chief over the land
to increase; and it is possible that British law may ultimately turn
him, as it turned the head of an Irish sept, into an owner. The chief
holds his court at his kraal, in the open air, settles disputes and
awards punishments. There are several British magistrates to deal with
grave offences, and a force of 220 native police, under British
officers. Lerothodi, as the successor of Moshesh, is Paramount Chief of
the nation; and all the greater chieftainships under him are held by his
uncles and cousins,--sons and grandsons of the founder of the
dynasty,--while there are also a few chiefs of the second rank belonging
to other families. Some of the uncles, especially Masupha, who lives at
the foot of Thaba Bosiyo, and is an obstinately conservative heathen,
give trouble both to Lerothodi and to the British Commissioner, their
quarrels turning mainly on questions of land and frontier. But on the
whole, things go on as well as can be expected in such a world as the
present: disturbances tend to diminish; and the horses or cattle that
are occasionally stolen from the Free State farmers are always recovered
for their owners, unless they have been got away out of Basutoland into
the colonial territories to the south and west. As far back as 1855,
Moshesh forbade the "smelling out" of witches, and now the British
authorities have suppressed the more noxious or offensive kinds of
ceremonies practised by the Kafirs. Otherwise they interfere as little
as may be with native ways, trusting to time, peace, and the
missionaries to secure the gradual civilization of the people. Once a
year the Commissioner meets the whole people, in their national assembly
called the Pitso