Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/452

 Except his begging propensities, I had no cause to complain of Sekhomo’s behaviour to myself during my short sojourn in his town. He was a man above middle height, rather inclined to be stout, but with nothing in either his appearance or comportment to distinguish him from any of the courtiers who attended him, or to mark him out in any way as the ruler of an important tribe. A small leather lappet was fastened round his loins, and a short mantle of the same material hung from his shoulders; this mantle, amongst the eastern Bamangwatos, is usually made of hartebeest skin, tanned smoothly except in five spots, and sometimes ornamented in the lower corner with a black circle cut from the skin of the sword-antelope, and trimmed round the neck with glass beads.

My first visit to the king was very brief. After the interchange of a few formal phrases, which Mr. Mackenzie interpreted, I took my leave under an engagement to come again on the following day; but before entering upon the details of my intercourse with Sekhomo and his subjects, I may introduce a few episodes in the history of the Bamangwatos.

According to traditions collected by Mr. Mackenzie the Bamangwatos are descended from the Banguaketse. I have already described how the Baharutse became subdivided, and migrated from their ancestral home. After a similar subdivision had subsequently led to the formation of the two tribes of the Banguaketse and the Bakuenas, the Bamangwatos disengaged themselves from the former