The Boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace! I, being present, heard the condition: "Sechele's children must be restored to him." I never saw men so completely and unconsciously in a trap as these four Boers were. Strong parties of armed Bakwains occupied every pass in the hills and gorges around; and had they not promised much more than they intended, or did perform, that day would have been their last. The commandant Scholz had appropriated the children of Sechele to be his own domestic slaves. I was present when one little boy, Khari, son of Sechele, was returned to his mother; the child had been allowed to roll into the fire, and there were three large unbound open sores on different parts of his body. His mother and the women received him with a flood of silent tears.
Slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places. The Boers assert that they are the best of masters, and that, if the English had possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have received much worse treatment than they did: what that would have been it is difficult to imagine. I took down the names of some scores of boys and girls, many of whom I knew as our scholars; but I could not comfort the weeping mothers by any hope of their ever returning from slavery.
The Bechuanas are universally much attached to children. A little child toddling near a party of men while they are eating is sure to get a handful of the food. This love of children may arise, in a great measure, from the patriarchal system under which they dwell. Every little stranger forms an increase of property to the whole community, and is duly reported to the chief--boys being more welcome than girls. The parents take the name of the child, and often address their children as Ma (mother), or Ra (father). Our eldest boy being named Robert, Mrs. Livingstone was, after his birth, always addressed as Ma-Robert, instead of Mary, her Christian name.
I have examined several cases in which a grandmother has taken upon herself to suckle a grandchild. Masina of Kuruman had no children after the birth of her daughter Sina, and had no milk after Sina was weaned, an event which usually is deferred till the child is two or three years old. Sina married when she was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins; Masina, after at least fifteen years' interval since she had suckled a child, took possession of one of them, applied it to her breast, and milk flowed, so that she was able to nurse the child entirely. Masina was at this time at least forty years of age. I have witnessed several other cases analogous to this. A grandmother of forty, or even less, for they become withered at an early age, when left at home with a young child, applies it to her own shriveled breast, and milk soon follows. In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, the chief wife of Mahure, who was about thirty-five years of age, the child was not entirely dependent on the grandmother's breast, as the mother suckled it too. I had witnessed the production of milk so frequently by the simple application of the lips of the child, that I was not therefore surprised when told by the Portuguese in Eastern Africa of a native doctor who, by applying a poultice of the pounded larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman, aided by the attempts of the child, could bring back the milk. Is it not possible that the story in the "Cloud of Witnesses" of a man, during the time of persecution in Scotland, putting his child to his own breast, and finding, to the astonishment of the whole country, that milk followed the act, may have been literally true? It was regarded and is quoted as a miracle; but the feelings of the father toward the child of a murdered mother must have been as nearly as possible analogous to the maternal feeling; and, as anatomists declare the structure of both male and female breasts to be identical, there is nothing physically impossible in the alleged result. The illustrious Baron Humboldt quotes an instance of the male breast yielding milk; and, though I am not conscious of being over-credulous, the strange instances I have examined in the opposite sex make me believe that there is no error in that philosopher's statement.
The Boers know from experience that adult captives may as well be left alone, for escape is so easy in a wild country that no fugitive-slave-law can come into operation; they therefore adopt the system of seizing only the youngest children, in order that these may forget their parents and remain in perpetual bondage. I have seen mere infants in their houses repeatedly. This fact was formerly denied; and the only thing which was wanting to make the previous denial of the practice of slavery and slave-hunting by the Transvaal Boers no longer necessary was the declaration of their independence.