Page:The Past, Present and Future Trade of the Cape Colonies with Central Africa.pdf/10

which I intend to speak—I mean those parts of South Africa which are called the uncivilised parts. This part here dotted on this black board is in the civilised part of South Africa. It is the Cape Colony, Natal, Griqualand West (the land of the diamond), the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. The uncivilised parts are inhabited, with the exception of a few missionaries, traders, and hunters, by natives alone. I made acquaintance with most of the native tribes living between the Waal and Zambesi rivers, and I have good and true information about parts like those lying between Limpopo, which I did not visit myself; but I visited also the southern part of Central Africa. At first we pay our attention to South Africa. Iconsider the Zambesi as the demarcation line between South and Central Africa. The parts between the Orange and Vaal rivers and the Zambesi are inhabited by a race called the Bechuanas, who live in six independent kingdoms, and form the heart and centre of South Africa. Going from south to north among the Bechuanas we meet first the Batlapins (King Mankuruane), the next to the north is the kingdom of the Barolongs (King Montsiwe), then the kingdom of the Banguaketse, and farther to the north the kingdom of the Bakwena. The boundary line between these show that these different countries form parallelograms. Their largest extent goes from west to east. The Bechuanas of these kingdoms (as named just now) live in the eastern parts, where water is more plentiful, towards the Limpopo, the Marico, and Harts rivers; and on the Molapo, in the western parts, the so-called Kalahari Desert, but which is not a desert at all; it is a large tract of land, covered with trees and plenty of grass, and only has great scarcity of water, and is inhabited by two tribes, the Makalahari and Madenassana. These are the slaves of the Bechuanas. Those natives (the Bechuanas) who come down to the diamond fields to work, every one of them has a master, and twenty or thirty of them have to stay in those dry countries and hunt ostriches for their masters. Going farther from south to north one meets, north of the Bakwenas, two tribes of the Bamangwato—the Eastern and the Western Bamangwato, or as I call the Eastern according to their capital, Shoshong, the Shoshong Banmangwato, and the Western ones, which I call, on account of the residence of their king lying near to the Lake N’Gami, Bamangwatos. Besides these native kingdoms we have yet two more in South Africa, lying between Limpopo and the Zambesi, they are the kingdom of Matabele and those of the Mashonas—and please to keep those countries in mind during my address. With regard to Central Africa, I recognise three kingdoms of the