Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/388

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
316
Seven Years in South Africa.

to bid us welcome to the place. Mr. Williams has since returned to Europe, and Mr. Price has been ordered by his society to Central Africa. By his second marriage with Miss Moffat, this gentleman became related to Dr. Livingstone.

I took two excursions next morning—one to the ruined town on the west, and another up the glen that opened into the valley, by the Molopolole Pass. Amonst the ruins I noticed some vaulted buildings, constructed of reeds, twigs, and cement, similar to those which I had seen in Mosilili’s Town on the Mosupa River. Turkish figs, and the well-known South African datura, with its violet-coloured blossoms, grew luxuriantly about the place.

The huts occupied by the Bakuenas, or Bakwenas, differed somewhat from those of the Batlapins and Barolongs. They were generally less substantially built, and in this respect were especially inferior to the Barolong huts; most of them, however, had the clay enclosures which are formed by the eastern Batlapins round their fire-places, but which are dispensed with by those of the south and west. In the villages, I found small meeting-rooms, or conference-halls, standing amongst the homesteads; they consisted of a conical straw roof, supported on twenty piles or more, the intervals between the piles being filled up half-way by a substantial wall of rushes, ornamented with simple devices in ochre.

My little expedition up the Molopolole glen well repaid me for the trouble. I shot several fish, and by the help of my rod caught no less than seven