people were sitting about in groups, some drinking coffee and some preparing their travelling-gear. I was rather struck by the circumstance that nearly all the women were dressed in black. Some of the men asked us whether we had seen any Boer waggons as we came along; and on our replying that we had passed a good many emigrants, they expressed great satisfaction, and said that their numbers would now very soon be large enough to allow them to start. They all declared their intention to show fight if either of the Bamangwato kings attempted to molest them or oppose their movements. When I spoke to them about the difficulty they would probably experience in conducting so large a quantity of cattle across the western part of the kingdom, where water was always very scarce, they turned a deaf ear to all my representations. It was just the same with the emigrants at the other camp, whom I saw at Shoshong on my return; they would pay no attention to any warning of danger; nothing could induce them to swerve from their design.
When I pressed my inquiries as to their true motive in migrating, they told me that the president had taken up with some utterly false views as to the interpretation of various passages in the Bible, and that the government had commenced forcing upon them a number of ill-timed and annoying innovations. If their fathers, they said, had lived, and grown grey, and died, without any of these new-fangled notions being thrust upon them, why should they now be expected to submit to the novelties against their will? And another thing which they felt to be peculiarly irritating was, that these state
