Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/469

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From Shoshong back to the Diamond Fields.
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he expressed his regret that we, whom he regarded as his friends, should be forsaking him in his trouble. As a parting gift I gave him a blue woollen dress for one of his seven wives, and he in-return presented me with a bundle of grey ostrich-feathers.

In no other native town throughout my journey did I succeed so well as here in making additions to my ethnographical collection. The resident traders showed some annoyance at my proceedings, but I managed to exchange nearly all the goods I had in my waggon for various objects of local handicraft. I obtained a great many assegais and hatchets, some daggers, knives, kiris, and sticks, wooden pillows, pots, pans, spoons, magic dice of various materials, as well as a large variety of snuff-boxes, gourd-vessels, articles for the toilet, ornaments, aprons, cups, dolls, and toys made of clay. Perhaps the most noteworthy amongst my acquisitions were some of Sekhomo’s war and rain drums, a little ivory fetish, some kiris made of rhinoceros horn, and several whistles. I bartered away some of my skins of pallah-antelopes, leopards, lynxes, and caracals, and for a small extra payment had some of them back again after they had been converted into garments. The Bamangwato workmanship differs very little from that of all other Bechuana tribes; their huts, though somewhat smaller and more slightly built, are most like those of the Barolongs, but they have larger corn-bins of unbaked clay than any I saw elsewhere.