Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/497

 One of the wheels of the waggon in which Mr. Mackenzie was travelling having broken, we had to wait while Mr. Hepburn went forward to Mochuri, the next town on our route, belonging to the western Bakhatlas, to procure a new one from the traders there. The damage being made good, we all proceeded to Mochuri, where we learnt the full particulars of the late engagement—the remnant of the Bakhatla defeated force having returned there on the preceding day. They had succeeded so far as to approach Molopolole unawares. They had killed sixteen Kalahari herdsmen, and had made themselves masters of all their cattle. They had defied all the efforts of the residents to recover their herds, and it was only at last, when they found themselves face to face with the breech-loaders which the Bakuenas had procured from the traders, that they were obliged to retreat and abandon their booty. Ten of them had fallen on the spot; four of the wounded had made their way home; but numbers of them, in spite of Sechele, the Bakuena king, being a Christian, were overtaken and massacred according to the custom of the tribe. They had, they avowed, been goaded on to make their attack because the Bakuenas had pillaged their cattle-stations, and cut off the hands and feet of many of the women.

Formerly the Bakhatlas had resided in the Transvaal; but after the occupation of the Boers, most of them left, and settled under two separate chiefs in Sechele’s territory, becoming known respectively as the eastern and western Bakhatlas. Sechele had now demanded the same tribute from them as he exacted from the Makhosi and the Batlokas, and it