Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/412

 help of oxen (animals which the women never touch), has relieved the Bechuana women of one of their most fatiguing labours. It is to be hoped that it will gradually tend to the abolition of all the senseless ceremonies of the rain-magic, which I have made this long digression to describe.

I resume the account of our travels.

We left Molopolole by the Koboque-pass, and proceeded northwards along the valley of an affluent of the Tshanyana. The vegetation around us was luxuriant, the river-banks, valleys, and hill-sides being partially wooded with shrubs and trees, and clothed with flowers and grasses of many varieties. The steep cliffs, here red, there yellow, there again grey or dark brown, formed natural terraces of rock, whilst the great loose boulders, some sharp at the edges, some rounded, were set in a framework of verdure, spangled with blossoms of every hue.

The clouds were not propitious, and it was through a heavy downpour of rain that we had te toil along the sandy road. But this was neither the end nor the worst of our ill-luck. When we came to a halt after the exertions of the day, I found that Stephan and Dietrich, the two servants that I had brought from Musemanyana, had disappeared, and with them two of my strongest bullocks. I had noticed on the previous evening how the runaways had been repeatedly warning me that there were lions in the neighbourhood, and concluded that they had a desire to dissuade me from continuing my