Basutoland is a comparatively small territory (10,300 square miles) somewhat larger than Wales or Massachusetts. It is nearly all mountainous, and contains the highest summits in South Africa, some of them reaching 11,000 feet. Few European travellers visit it, for it lies quite away from the main routes; it has no commercial importance, and its white population is extremely small, the land being reserved for the natives alone. We were attracted to it by what we had heard of the scenery; but found when we came to traverse it, that the social conditions were no less interesting than the landscapes.

The easiest approach is from Bloemfontein. Starting from that pleasant little town one bright November morning on the top of the Ladybrand coach, we drove over wide and nearly level stretches of pasture-land, which now, after the first rains, were vividly green, and beginning to be dotted with flowers. The road was only a track, rough and full of ruts, and the coach, drawn by eight horses, was an old one, whose springs had lost whatever elasticity they might once have possessed, so that it was only by holding tight on to the little rail at the back of the seat that we could keep our places. The incessant pitching and jolting would have been intolerable on an ordinary drive; but here the beauty of the vast landscape, the keen freshness of the air, and the brilliance of the light made one forget every physical discomfort. About noon, after crossing the muddy flood of the Modder River, whose channel, almost dry a month before, had now been filled by the rains, we entered a more hilly region, and came soon after noon to the village of Thaba 'Ntshu, called from the bold rocky peak of that name, which is a landmark for all the country round, and is famous in history as the rallying-point of the various parties of emigrant Boers who quitted Cape Colony in the Great Trek of 1836-37. Near it is a large native reservation, where thousands of Barolong Kafirs live, tilling the better bits of soil and grazing their cattle all over the rolling pastures. Some ten or fifteen miles farther the track reaches the top of a long ascent, and a magnificent prospect is revealed to the south-east of the noble range of the Maluti Mountains, standing out in the dazzling clearness of this dry African air, yet mellowed by distance to tints of delicate beauty. We were reminded of the view of the Pyrenees from Pau, where, however, the mountains are both nearer and higher than here, and of the view of the Rocky Mountains from Calgary, on the Canadian Pacific Railway. From this point onward the road mounts successive ridges, between which lie rich hollows of agricultural land, and from the tops of which nearer and nearer views of the Maluti range are gained. There was hardly a tree visible, save those which Europeans have planted round the farmhouses that one finds every seven or eight miles; and I dare say the country would be dreary in the dry season or in dull grey weather. But as we saw it, the wealth of sunlight, the blue of the sky above, the boundless stretches of verdure beneath, made the drive a dream of delight. When the sun sank the constellations came out in this pure, dry African air with a brilliance unknown to Europe; and we tired our eyes in gazing on the Centaur and the Argo and those two Magellanic clouds by which one finds the position of the southern pole. Soon after dark we came to the top of the last high hill, and saw what seemed an abyss opening beneath. The descent was steep, but a beaten track led down it, reputed the most dangerous piece of road in the Free State; and the driver regaled us with narratives of the accidents that had taken place on the frequent occasions when the coach had been upset, adding, however, that nobody ever had been or would be killed while he held the reins. He proved as good as his word, and brought us safely to Ladybrand at 9 P.M., after more than twelve hours of a drive so fatiguing that only the marvellously bracing air enabled us to feel none the worse for it.

Ladybrand is a pretty little hamlet lying at the foot of the great flat-topped hill, called the Plaat Berg, which the perilous road crosses, and looking out from groves of Australian gum-trees, across fertile corn-fields and meadows, to the Caledon River and the ranges of Basutoland. A ride of eight miles brings one to the ferry (which in the dry season becomes a shallow ford) across this stream, and on the farther shore one is again under the British flag at Maseru, the residence of the Imperial Commissioner who supervises the administration of the country, under the direction of the High Commissioner for South Africa. Here are some sixty Europeans—officials, police, and store-keepers—and more than two thousand natives. Neither here nor anywhere else in Basutoland is there an inn; those few persons who visit the country find quarters in the stores which several whites have been permitted to establish, unless they have, as we had, the good fortune to be the guests of the Commissioner.

Basutoland is the Switzerland of South Africa and, very appropriately, is the part of South Africa where the old inhabitants, defended by their hills, have retained the largest measure of freedom. Although most of it is covered with lofty mountains, it has, like Switzerland, one comparatively level and fertile tract—that which lies along the left bank of the Caledon River. Morija, the oldest French mission station, lies in a pretty hollow between five and six thousand feet above the sea,—nearly all Basutoland is above 5000 feet,—some sixteen miles south-east from Maseru. Groves of trees and luxuriant gardens give softness and verdure to the landscape, and among them the mission houses and schools, and printing-house whence Basuto books are issued, lie scattered about, up and down the slopes of the hill. Though there are plenty of streams in Basutoland, there is hardly any swampy ground, and consequently little or no fever, so the missionaries invalided from the Zambesi frequently come here to recruit. The station of Morija has been for many years past directed by French-Swiss pastors, but the schools have been under the charge of Scottish Presbyterian clergymen, of course in the service of the Paris Society, and they gave us a hearty welcome. They have large and flourishing schools, from which a considerable number of young Kafirs go out every year among their countrymen and become an effective civilizing influence. There is among the Bantu tribes so little religion, in the European sense of the word, that the natives seem never to have felt the impulse to persecute, and hardly ever to obstruct the preaching of Christianity. When opposition comes, it comes from the witch-doctor or medicine-man, who feels his craft in danger, seldom from the chief. Here most of the leading men have been and still are on good terms with the missionaries. The Paramount Chief of the whole country lives three miles from Morija, at Matsieng, where he has established, as the wont of the Kafirs is, a new kraal on the top of a breezy hill, forsaking the residence of his father in the valley beneath. Here we visited him.

Lerothodi, the Paramount Chief, is the son of Letsie and grandson of Moshesh, and now ranks with Khama as the most important native potentate south of the Zambesi. He is a strong, thickset man, who looks about fifty years of age, and is not wanting either in intelligence or in firmness. He was dressed in a grey shooting-coat and trousers of grey cloth, with a neat new black, low-crowned hat, and received the Deputy Acting Commissioner and ourselves in a stone house which he has recently built as a sort of council-chamber and reception-room for white visitors. Hard by, another house, also of stone, was being erected to lodge such visitors, and over its doorway a native sculptor had carved the figure of a crocodile, the totem of the Basutos. When a chief sits to administer justice among the tribesmen, as he does on most mornings, he always sits in the open air, a little way from his sleeping-huts. We found a crowd of natives gathered at the levee, whom Lerothodi quitted to lead us into the reception-room. He was accompanied by six or seven magnates and counsellors,—one of the most trusted counsellors (a Christian) was not a person of rank, but owed his influence to his character and talents,—and among these one spoke English and interpreted to us the compliments which Lerothodi delivered, together with his assurances of friendship and respect for the Protecting Power, while we responded with phrases of similar friendliness. The counsellors, listening with profound and impressive gravity, echoed the sentences of the chief with a chorus of "ehs," a sound which it is hard to reproduce by letters, for it is a long, slow, deep expiration of the breath in a sort of singing tune. The Kafirs constantly use it to express assent and appreciation, and manage to throw a great deal of apparent feeling into it. Presently some of them spoke, one in pretty good English, dilating on the wish of the Basuto[67] tribe to be guided in the path of prosperity by the British Government. Then Lerothodi led us out and showed us, with some pride, the new guest-house he was building, and the huts inhabited by his wives, all scrupulously neat. Each hut stands in an enclosure surrounded by a tall fence of reeds, and the floors of red clay were perfectly hard, smooth, and spotlessly clean. The news of the reception accorded shortly before (in London) to Khama had kindled in him a desire to visit England, but his hints thrown out to that effect were met by the Commissioner's remark that Khama's total abstinence and general hostility to the use of intoxicants had been a main cause for the welcome given him, and that if other chiefs desired like treatment in England they had better emulate Khama. This shot went home.

From the chief's kraal we had a delightful ride of some twenty miles to a spot near the foot of the high mountains, where we camped for the night. The track leads along the base of the Maluti range, sometimes over a rolling table-land, sometimes over hills and down through valleys, all either cultivated or covered with fresh close grass. The Malutis consist of beds of sandstone and shale, overlaid by an outflow of igneous rock from two to five thousand feet thick. They rise very steeply, sometimes breaking into long lines of dark brown precipice, and the crest seldom sinks lower than 7000 feet. Behind them to the south-east are the waterfalls, one of which, 630 feet high, is described as the grandest cascade in Africa south of the Zambesi. It was only two days' journey away, but unfortunately we had not time to visit it.

The country we were traversing beneath the mountains was full of beauty, so graceful were the slopes and rolls of the hills, so bright the green of the pastures; while the sky, this being the rainy season, had a soft tone like that of England, and was flecked with white clouds sailing across the blue. It was also a prosperous-looking country, for the rich soil supported many villages, and many natives, men as well as women, were to be seen at work in the fields as we rode by. Except where streams have cut deeply into the soft earth, one gets about easily on horseback, for there are no woods save a little scrub clinging to the sides of the steeper glens. We were told that the goats eat off the young trees, and that the natives have used the older ones for fuel. In the afternoon we passed St. Michael's, the seat of a flourishing Roman Catholic mission, and took our way up the steep and stony track of a kloof (ravine) which led to a plateau some 6000 feet or more above sea-level. The soil of this plateau is a deep red loam, formed by the decomposition of the trap rock, and is of exceptional fertility, like the decomposed traps of Oregon and the Deccan. Here we pitched our tent, and found our liberal supply of blankets none too liberal, for the air was keen, and the difference between day and night temperature is great in these latitudes. Next morning, starting soon after dawn, we rode across the deep-cut beds of streams and over breezy pastures for some six or seven miles, to the base of the main Maluti range, and after a second breakfast prepared for the ascent of the great summit, which we had been admiring for two days as it towered over the long line of peaks or peered alone from the mists which often enveloped the rest of the range. It is called Machacha, and is a conspicuous object from Ladybrand and the Free State uplands nearly as far as Thaba 'Ntshu. Our route lay up a grassy hollow so steep that we had thought our friend, the Commissioner, must be jesting when he pointed up it and told us that was the way we had to ride. For a pedestrian it was a piece of hand and foot climbing, and seemed quite impracticable for horses. But up the horses went. They are a wonderful breed, these little Basuto nags. This region is the part of South Africa where the horse seems most thoroughly at home and happy, and is almost the only part where the natives breed and ride him. Sixty years ago there was not a horse in the country—the animal, it need hardly be said, is not a native of South Africa. But in 1852, the Basutos had plenty of ponies, and used them in the short campaign of that year with extraordinary effect. They are small, seldom exceeding twelve hands in height, a little larger than the ponies of Iceland, very hardy, and wonderfully clever on hills, able not only to mount a slope whose angle is 30° to 35°, but to keep their footing when ridden horizontally along it. A rider new to the country finds it hard not to slip off over the tail when the animal is ascending, or over the head when he is descending.

The hollow brought us to a col fully 7500 feet above the sea, from which we descended some way into a valley behind, and then rode for three or four miles along the steep sides, gradually mounting, and having below us on the right a deep glen, covered everywhere with rich grass, and from the depths of which the murmur of a rushing stream, a sound rare in South Africa, rose up softly through the still, clear air. At length we reached the mountain crest, followed it for a space, and then, to avoid the crags along the crest, guided our horses across the extremely steep declivities by which it sinks to the east, till we came to a pass between precipices, with a sharp rock towering up in the middle of the pass and a glen falling abruptly to the west. Beyond this point—8500 feet or so above sea-level—the slopes were too steep even for the Basuto horses, and we therefore left them in charge of one of our Kafir attendants. A more rich and varied alpine flora than that which clothed the pastures all round I have seldom seen. The flowers had those brilliant hues that belong to the plants of our high European mountains, and they grew in marvellous profusion. They were mostly of the same genera as one finds in the Alps or the Pyrenees, but all or nearly all of different species; and among those I found several, particularly two beautiful Gerania, which the authorities at Kew have since told me are new to science. It was interesting to come here upon two kinds of heath—the first we had seen since quitting the Cape peninsula, for, rich as that peninsula is in heaths, there are very few to be found in other parts of South Africa, and those only, I think, upon high mountains.

After a short rest we started for the final climb, first up a steep acclivity, covered with low shrubs and stones, and then across a wide hollow, where several springs of deliciously cold water break out. Less than an hour's easy work brought us to the highest point of a ridge which fell northward in a precipice, and our Kafirs declared that this was the summit of Machacha. But right in front of us, not half a mile away, on the other side of a deep semi-circular gulf,—what is called in Scotland a corrie,—a huge black cliff reared its head 400 feet above us, and above everything else in sight. This was evidently the true top and must be ascended. The Kafirs, perhaps thinking they had done enough for one day, protested that it was inaccessible. "Nonsense," we answered; "that is where we are going;" and when we started off at full speed they followed. Keeping along the crest for about half a mile to the eastward—it is an arËte which breaks down to the corrie in tremendous precipices, but slopes more gently to the south—we came to the base of the black cliff, and presently discovered a way by which, climbing hither and thither through the crags, we reached the summit, and saw an immense landscape unroll itself before us. It was one of those views which have the charm, so often absent from mountain panoramas, of combining a wide stretch of plain in one direction with a tossing sea of mountain-peaks in another. To the north-east and east and south-east, one saw nothing but mountains, some of them, especially in the far north-east, toward Natal, apparently as lofty as that on which we stood, and many of them built on bold and noble lines. To the south-east, where are the great waterfalls which are one of the glories of Basutoland, the general height was less, but a few peaks seemed to reach 10,000 feet. At our feet, to the west and south-west, lay the smiling corn-fields and pastures we had traversed the day before, and beyond them the rich and populous valley of the Caledon River, and beyond it, again, the rolling uplands of the Orange Free State, with the peak of Thaba 'Ntshu just visible, and still farther a blue ridge, faint in the extreme distance, that seemed to lie on the other side of Bloemfontein, nearly one hundred miles away. The sky was bright above us, but thunderstorms hung over the plains of the Free State behind Ladybrand, and now and then one caught a forked tongue of light flashing from among them. It was a magnificent landscape, whose bareness—for there is scarcely a tree upon these slopes—was more than compensated by the brilliance of the light and the clearness of the air, which made the contrast between the sunlit valley of the Caledon and the solemn shadows under the thunder-clouds more striking, and the tone of the distant ranges more deep and rich in colour, than in any similar prospect one could recall from the mountain watch-towers of Europe. Nor was the element of historical interest wanting. Fifteen miles away, but seeming to lie almost at our feet, was the flat-topped hill of Thaba Bosiyo, the oft-besieged stronghold of Moshesh, and beyond it the broad table-land of Berea, where the Basutos fought, and almost overcame, the forces of Sir George Cathcart in that war of 1852 which was so fateful both to Basutoland and to the Free State.

Less than a mile from the peak on which we sat, we could descry, in the precipice which surrounds the great corrie, the black mouth of a cave. It was the den of the cannibal chief Machacha, whose name has clung to the mountain, and who established himself there seventy years ago, when the ravages of Tshaka, the Zulu king, had driven the Kafir tribes of Natal to seek safety in flight, and reduced some among them, for want of other food, to take to human flesh. Before that time this mountain-land had been inhabited only by wandering Bushmen, who have left marks of their presence in pictures on the rocks. Here and there among the crags jabbering baboons darted about, and great hawks sailed in circles above us. Otherwise we had seen no living wild creature since we left the pastures of the valley.

The summit of Machacha is composed of a dark igneous rock, apparently a sort of amygdaloidal trap, with white and greenish calcareous crystals scattered through it. The height is given on the maps as 11,000 feet; but so far as one could judge by frequent observations from below and by calculations made during the ascent, I should think it not more than 10,500. It seems to be the culminating point of the Maluti range, but may be exceeded in height by Mont aux Sources, eighty miles off to the north-east, where Basutoland touches Natal on the one side and the Free State on the other.

Descending by a somewhat more direct route, which we struck out for ourselves, we rejoined our horses at the pass where we had left them three hours before, and from there plunged down the kloof, or ravine, between the precipices which led to the foot of the mountain. It was here too steep to ride; indeed, it was about as steep a slope as one can descend on foot with comfort, the angle being in some places fully 40° A grand piece of scenery, for the dark rock walls rose menacing on either hand; and also a beautiful one, for the flowers, especially two brilliant shrubby geraniums, were profuse and gorgeous in hue. At the bottom, after a very rough scramble, we mounted our horses, and hastened along to escape the thunderstorm which was now nearly upon us, and which presently drove us for shelter into a native hut, where a Basuto woman, with her infant hanging in a cloth on her back, was grinding corn between two stones. She went on with her work, and presently addressed my wife, asking (as was explained to us) for a piece of soap wherewith to smear her face, presumably as a more fragrant substitute for the clay or ochre with which the Basuto ladies cover their bodies. The hut was clean and sweet, and, indeed, all through Basutoland we were struck by the neat finish of the dwellings and of the reed fences which inclosed them. When the storm had passed away over the mountains, "growling and muttering into other lands," and the vast horizon was again flooded with evening sunshine, we rode swiftly away, first over the rolling plateau we had traversed in the forenoon, then turning to the north along the top of the sandstone cliffs that inclose the valley of the Kaloe River, where Bushman pictures adorn the caves. At last as night fell, we dropped into the valley of the Kaloe itself, and so slowly through the darkness, for the horses were tired, and the track (which crosses the river four times) was rough and stony, came at last to the mission station of Thaba Bosiyo. Here we were welcomed by the Swiss pastor in charge of the mission, Mr. E. Jacottet, whose collection of Basuto and Barotse popular tales have made him well known to the students of folk-lore. No man knows the Basutos better than he and his colleague, Mr. Dyke of Morija; and what they told us was of the highest interest. Next day was Sunday, and gave us the opportunity of seeing a large congregation of Basuto converts and of hearing their singing, the excellence of which reminded us of the singing of negro congregations in the Southern States of America. We had also two interesting visits. One was from an elderly Basuto magnate of the neighbourhood, who was extremely anxious to know if Queen Victoria really existed, or was a mere figment of the British Government. He had met many white men, he told us, but none of them had ever set eyes on the Queen, and he could not imagine how it was possible that a great chieftainess should not be seen by her people. We satisfied his curiosity by giving full details of the times, places, and manner in which the British sovereign receives her subjects, and he went away, declaring himself convinced and more loyal than ever. The second visitor was a lady who had come to attend church. She is the senior wife of a chief named Thekho, a son of Moshesh. She impressed us as a person of great force of character and great conversational gifts, was dressed in a fashionable hat and an enormous black velvet mantle, and plied us with numerous questions regarding the Queen, her family, and her government. She lives on the hill among her dependents, exerts great influence, and has done good service in resisting the reactionary tendencies of her brother-in-law Masupha, a dogged and turbulent old pagan.

The mission station lies at the foot of the hill of Thaba Bosiyo, in a singular region where crags of white or grey sandstone, detached from the main mass of the tabular hills, stand up in solitary shafts and pinnacles, and give a weird, uncanny look to the landscape. The soil is fertile and well cultivated, but being alluvial, it is intersected in all directions by the channels of streams, which have dug so deep into it that much good land is every year lost by the mischief the streams work when in flood. The sides of these channels are usually vertical, and often eight, ten, or even twelve feet high, so that they offer a serious obstacle to travellers either by waggon or on horseback. The hill itself is so peculiar in structure, and has played such a part in history, as to deserve some words of description. It is nearly two miles long and less than a mile across, elliptical in form, rising about five hundred feet above its base, and breaking down on every side in a line of cliffs, which, on the north-west and north side (toward the mission station), are from twenty to forty feet high. On the other side, which I could not so carefully examine, they are apparently higher. These cliffs are so continuous all round as to leave—so one is told—only three spots in the circumference where they can be climbed; and although I noticed one or two other places where a nimble cragsman might make his way up, it is at those three points only that an attack by a number of men could possibly be made. The easiest point is where a dyke of igneous rock, thirty feet wide, strikes up the face of the hill from the north-north-west, cutting through the sandstone precipice. The decomposition of this dyke has opened a practicable path, from fifteen to twenty-five feet in width, to the top. The top is a large grassy flat, with springs of water and plenty of good pasture.

It was this natural fortress that the Basuto chief Mosheshwe, or, as he is usually called, Moshesh, chose for his dwelling and the stronghold of his tribe, in A.D. 1824. The conquests of the ferocious Tshaka had driven thousands of Kafirs from their homes in Natal and on both sides of the Vaal River. Clans had been scattered, and the old dynasties rooted out or bereft of their influence and power. In the midst of this confusion, a young man, the younger son of a chief of no high lineage, and belonging to a small tribe, gathered around him a number of minor clans and fugitives from various quarters, and by his policy—astute, firm and tenacious—built them up into what soon became a powerful nation. Moving hither and hither along the foot of the great Maluti range, his skilful eye fixed on Thaba Bosiyo as a place fit to be the headquarters of the nation. There was good land all round, the approaches could be easily watched, and the hill itself, made almost impregnable by nature, supplied pasture for the cattle as well as perennial water. By tactfully conciliating the formidable tribes and boldly raiding the weaker ones, Moshesh rapidly acquired wealth (that is to say, cattle), strength and reputation, so that in 1836, when the emigrant Boers moved up into what is now the Free State, he was already the second power north of the mountains, inferior only to the terrible Mosilikatze. The latter on one occasion (in 1831) had sent a strong force of Matabili against him. Moshesh retired into his hill, which he defended by rolling down stones on the assailants; and when the invaders were presently obliged to retreat for want of food, he sent supplies to them on their way back, declaring his desire to be at peace with all men. The Matabili never attacked him again. In 1833 he intimated to the missionaries of the Paris Evangelical Society his willingness to receive them, planted them at Morija, and gave them afterwards their present station at the foot of Thaba Bosiyo, his own village being, of course, on the top. Their counsels were of infinite value to him in the troublous times that followed, and he repaid them by constant protection and encouragement. But though he listened, like so many Kafir chiefs, to sermons, enjoyed the society of his French friends, and was himself fond of quoting Scripture, he never became a Christian and was even thought to have, like Solomon, fallen in his old age somewhat more under heathen influences. Many were the wars he had to sustain with the native tribes who lived round him, as well as with the white settlers in the Orange River territory to the north, and many the escapes from danger which his crafty and versatile policy secured. Two of these wars deserve special mention, for both are connected with the place I am describing. In December, 1852, Sir George Cathcart, then Governor of Cape Colony, crossed the Caledon River a little above Maseru and led a force of two thousand British infantry and five hundred cavalry, besides artillery, against the Basutos. One of the three divisions in which the army moved was led into an ambush, severely handled by the nimble Basuto horsemen, and obliged to retreat. The division which Sir George himself led found itself confronted, when it reached the foot of Thaba Bosiyo, by a body of Basutos so numerous and active that it had great difficulty in holding its ground, and might have been destroyed but for the timely arrival of the third division just before sunset. The British general intrenched himself for the night in a strong position; and next morning, realizing at length the difficulties of his enterprise, set out to retire to the Caledon River. Before he reached it, however, a message from Moshesh overtook him. That wary chief, who knew the real strength of the British better than did his people, had been driven into the war by their over-confidence and their reluctance to pay the cattle fine which the Governor had demanded. Now that there was a chance of getting out of it he resolved to seize that chance, and after a consultation with one of the French missionaries, begged Sir George Cathcart for peace, acknowledging himself to be the weaker party, and declaring that he would do his best to keep his tribesmen in order. The Governor, glad to be thus relieved of what might have proved a long and troublesome war, accepted these overtures. The British army was marched back to Cape Colony, and Moshesh thereafter enjoyed the fame of being the only native potentate who had come out of a struggle with Great Britain virtually if not formally the victor.

But a still severer ordeal was in store for the virgin fortress and its lord. After much indecisive strife, the whites and the Basutos were, in 1865, again engaged in a serious war. The people of what had then become (see Chapter XI) the Orange Free State had found the Basutos troublesome neighbours, and a dispute had arisen regarding the frontier line. The Free State militia, well practised in native warfare, invaded Basutoland, reduced many of the native strongholds and besieged Thaba Bosiyo. A storming party advanced to carry the hill by assault, mounting the steep open acclivity to the passage which is opened (as already mentioned) by the greenstone dyke as it cuts its way through the line of sandstone cliff. They had driven the Basutos before them, and had reached a point where the path leads up a narrow cleft formed by the decomposition of the dyke, between walls of rock some twenty feet high. Thirty yards more would have brought them to the open top of the hill, and Moshesh would have been at their mercy. But at this moment a bullet from one of the few muskets which the defenders possessed, fired by a good marksman from the rock above the cleft, pierced Wepener, the leader of the assailants. The storming party halted, hesitated, fell back to the bottom of the hill, and the place was once more saved. Not long after, Moshesh, finding himself likely to be overmastered, besought the Imperial Government, which had always regarded him with favour since the conclusion of Sir George Cathcart's war, to receive him and his people "and let them live under the large folds of the flag of England." The High Commissioner intervened, declaring the Basutos to be thenceforward British subjects, and in 1869 a peace was concluded with the Free State, by which the latter obtained a fertile strip of territory along the north-west branch of the Caledon which had previously been held by Moshesh, while the Basutos came (in 1871) under the administrative control of Cape Colony. Moshesh died soon afterwards, full of years and honour, and leaving a name which has become famous in South Africa. He was one of the remarkable instances, like Toussaint l'Ouverture and the Hawaiian king Kamehameha the First, of a man, sprung from a savage race, who effected great things by a display of wholly exceptional gifts. His sayings have become proverbs in native mouths. One of them is worth noting, as a piece of grim humour, a quality rare among the Kafirs. Some of his chief men had been urging him, after he had become powerful, to take vengeance upon certain cannibals who were believed to have killed and eaten his grandparents. Moshesh replied: "I must consider well before I disturb the sepulchres of my ancestors."

Basutoland remained quiet till 1879, when the Cape Government, urged, it would appear, by the restless spirit of Sir Bartle Frere (then Governor), conceived the unhappy project of disarming the Basutos. It was no doubt a pity that so many of them possessed firearms; but it would have been better to let them keep their weapons than to provoke a war; and the Cape Prime Minister, who met the nation in its great popular assembly, the Pitso, had ample notice through the speeches delivered there by important chiefs of the resistance with which any attempt to enforce disarmament would be met. However, rash counsels prevailed. The attempt was made in 1880; war followed, and the Basutos gave the colonial troops so much trouble that in 1883 the Colony proposed to abandon the territory altogether. Ultimately, in 1884, the Imperial Government took it over, and has ever since administered it by a Resident Commissioner.

The Basuto nation, which had been brought very low at the time when Moshesh threw himself upon the British Government for protection, has latterly grown rapidly, and now numbers over 220,000 souls. This increase is partly due to an influx of Kafirs from other tribes, each chief encouraging the influx, since the new retainers, who surround him, increase his importance. But it has now reached a point when it ought to be stopped, because all the agricultural land is taken up for tillage, and the pastures begin scarcely to suffice for the cattle. The area is 10,263 square miles, about two-thirds that of Switzerland, but by far the larger part of it is wild mountain. No Europeans are allowed to hold land, and a licence is needed even for the keeping of a store. Neither are any mines worked. European prospectors are not permitted to come in and search for minerals, for the policy of the authorities has been to keep the country for the natives; and nothing alarms the chiefs so much as the occasional appearance of these speculative gentry, who, if allowed a foothold, would soon dispossess them. Thus it remains doubtful whether either gold or silver or diamonds exist in "payable quantities."

The natives, however, go in large numbers—in 1895-6 as many as 28,000 went out—to work in the mines at Kimberley and on the Witwatersrand, and they bring back savings, which have done much to increase the prosperity of the tribe. At present they seem fairly contented and peaceable. The land belongs to the nation, and all may freely turn their cattle on the untilled parts. Fields, however, are allotted to each householder by the chief, to be tilled, and the tenant, protected by public opinion, retains them so long as he tills them. He cannot sell them, but they will pass to his children. Ordinary administration, which consists mainly in the allotment and management of land, is left to the chief; as also ordinary jurisdiction, both civil and criminal. The present tendency is for the disposing power of the chief over the land to increase; and it is possible that British law may ultimately turn him, as it turned the head of an Irish sept, into an owner. The chief holds his court at his kraal, in the open air, settles disputes and awards punishments. There are several British magistrates to deal with grave offences, and a force of 220 native police, under British officers. Lerothodi, as the successor of Moshesh, is Paramount Chief of the nation; and all the greater chieftainships under him are held by his uncles and cousins,—sons and grandsons of the founder of the dynasty,—while there are also a few chiefs of the second rank belonging to other families. Some of the uncles, especially Masupha, who lives at the foot of Thaba Bosiyo, and is an obstinately conservative heathen, give trouble both to Lerothodi and to the British Commissioner, their quarrels turning mainly on questions of land and frontier. But on the whole, things go on as well as can be expected in such a world as the present: disturbances tend to diminish; and the horses or cattle that are occasionally stolen from the Free State farmers are always recovered for their owners, unless they have been got away out of Basutoland into the colonial territories to the south and west. As far back as 1855, Moshesh forbade the "smelling out" of witches, and now the British authorities have suppressed the more noxious or offensive kinds of ceremonies practised by the Kafirs. Otherwise they interfere as little as may be with native ways, trusting to time, peace, and the missionaries to secure the gradual civilization of the people. Once a year the Commissioner meets the whole people, in their national assembly called the Pitso,—the name is derived from their verb "to call" (cf. ?????s?a)—which in several points recalls the agora, or assembly of freemen described in the Homeric poems. The Paramount Chief presides, and debate is mainly conducted by the chiefs; but all freemen, gentle and simple, have a right to speak in it. There is no voting, only a declaration, by shouts, of the general feeling. Though the head of the nation has been usually the person who convokes it, a magnate lower in rank might always, like Achilles in the Iliad, have it summoned when a fitting occasion arose. And it was generally preceded by a consultation among the leading men, though I could not discover that there was any regular council of chiefs.[68] In all these points the resemblance to the primary assemblies of the early peoples of Europe is close enough to add another to the arguments, already strong, which discredit the theory that there is any such thing as an "Aryan type" of institutions, and which suggest the view that in studying the polities of primitive nations we must not take affinities of language as the basis of a classification.

To-day the Pitso has lost much of its old importance, and tends to become a formal meeting, in which the British Commissioner causes new regulations to be read aloud, inviting discussion on points which any one present may desire to raise, and addresses the people, awarding praise or blame, and adding such exhortations as he thinks seasonable. The missionaries (like the Bishops in a Witenagemot) and the chief British officials are usually present. In perusing the shorthand report of the great Pitso held in 1879, at which the question of disarmament was brought forward by the Cape Prime Minister, I was struck by the freedom and intelligence with which the speakers delivered their views. One observed: "This is our parliament, though it is a very disorderly parliament, because we are all mixed up, young and old; and we cannot accept any measure without discussion." Another commented severely upon an unhappy phrase that had been used at Cape Town by a member of the Cape Government: "Mr. U. said the Basutos were the natural enemies of the white man, because we were black. Is that language which should be used by a high officer of the Government? Let sentiments like these pass away—we are being educated to believe that all people are equal, and feel that sentiments like these are utterly wrong." A third claimed that the people must keep their guns, because "at our circumcision we were given a shield and an assagai, and told never to part with them; and that if ever we came back from an expedition and our shield and assagai were not found before our house, we should die the death." And a fourth, wishing to excuse any vehement expression he might use, observed: "We have a proverb which says that a man who makes a mistake in a public assembly cannot be killed." In this proverb there is the germ of the English "privilege of Parliament." It is easy to gather from the whole proceedings of these Pitsos how much more popular government has been among the Basutos than it was among the Zulus or Matabili. Tshaka or Lo Bengula would in a moment have had the neck twisted of any one who ventured to differ publicly from his opinion. In this respect the Basutos resemble their kinsfolk the Bamangwato, among whom Khama rules as a chief amenable to public opinion, which, in that instance, is unfortunately far behind the enlightened purposes of the sovereign.

Nowhere has the gospel made such progress among the Kafirs as in Basutoland. The missionaries,—French, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and English Episcopalian,—working not only independently but on very different lines, have brought nearly fifty thousand natives under Christian influences, as members or adherents. Not all of these are baptised converts—the Franco-Swiss missionaries, by whom far the largest part of the work has been done, tell me that baptisms do not increase fast; and they are wise in not measuring the worth of their work by the number of baptisms. Education is spreading. At the last public examinations at the Cape, the French Protestant missionaries sent up twenty Basuto boys, of whom ten passed in honours, and ten in high classes, the standard being the same for whites and blacks. There are now one hundred and fifty schools in the country, all but two of which are conducted by the missionaries.

Strange waves of sentiment pass over the people, at one time carrying them back to paganism, at another inclining them to Christianity—the first sign of the latter tendency being discernible in an increase of attendance at the mission schools. The women are more backward than the men, because they have been kept in subjection, and their intelligence has remained only half developed. But their condition is improving; men now work with them in the fields, and they demand clothes instead of so much oil, wherewith to smear their bodies. As education becomes more diffused, old heathen customs lose their hold, and will probably in thirty years have disappeared. The belief in ghosts and magic is, of course, still strong. On the top of Thaba Bosiyo we were shown the graves of Moshesh and several of his brothers and sons, marked by rude stones, with the name of each chief on his stone. But we were told that in reality the bodies of Moshesh and of several of the others are not here at all, having been dug up and reinterred more than a mile away near the foot of the hill. Were the body under the stone, the ghost, which usually dwells near the body, would be liable to be called up by necromancers, and might be compelled to work mischief to the tribe—mischief which would be serious in proportion to the power the spirit possessed during life. Considering, however, that nearly all the ancient world held similar beliefs, and that a large part of the modern world, even in Europe, still clings to them, the persistence of these interesting superstitions need excite no surprise, nor are they productive of much practical ill, now that the witch-doctor is no longer permitted to denounce men to death.

The material progress of the people has been aided by the enactment of stringent laws against the sale of white men's intoxicating liquors, though some of the chiefs show but a poor example of obedience to these laws, the enforcement of which is rendered difficult by the illicit sale which goes on along the frontiers where Basutoland touches the Free State and the eastern part of Cape Colony. The old native arts and industries decline as European goods become cheaper, and industrial training has now become one of the needs of the people. It is an encouraging sign that, under the auspices of Lerothodi, a sum of £3,184 sterling was collected from the tribe in 1895-6, for the foundation of an institution to give such training. The receipts from import duties have so much increased that the contribution of £18,000 paid by Cape Colony is now annually reduced by nearly £12,000, and the hut tax, of ten shillings per hut, now easily and promptly collected, amounts to £23,000 a year, leaving a surplus, out of which £1,300 is paid to the Cape. Basutoland is within the South African Customs Union.

These facts are encouraging. They show that, so far, the experiment of leaving a native race to advance in their own way, under their own chiefs, but carefully supervised by imperial officers, has proved successful. A warlike, unstable, and turbulent, although intelligent people, while increasing fast in wealth and material comfort, has also become more peaceful and orderly, and by the abandonment of its more repulsive customs is passing from savagery to a state of semi-civilization. Still the situation has its anxieties. The very prosperity of the country has drawn into it a larger population than the arable and pastoral land may prove able to support. The Free State people are not friendly to it, and many politicians in Cape Colony would like to recover it for the Colony, while many white adventurers would like to prospect for mines, or to oust the natives from the best lands. The natives themselves are armed, and being liable, like all natives, to sudden fits of unreason, may conceivably be led into disorders which would involve a war and the regular conquest of the country. The firmness as well as the conciliatory tactfulness which the first Commissioner, Sir Marshal Clarke, and his successor, the present Acting Commissioner, have shown, has hitherto averted these dangers, and has inspired the people with a belief in the good will of the British Government. If the progress of recent years can be maintained for thirty years more, the risk of trouble will have almost disappeared, for by that time a new generation, unused to war, will have grown up. Whoever feels for the native and cares for his future must wish a fair chance for the experiment that is now being tried in Basutoland, of letting him develop in his own way, shielded from the rude pressure of the whites.