At Secocoeni's kraal we had engaged two boys to carry our packs as far
as the fort, who, on their arrival, were so well satisfied with the way
in which we treated them that they requested to be allowed to proceed
with us. These young barbarians, who went respectively by the names of
"Nojoke" and "Scowl," as being the nearest approach in English to their
Sisutu names, were the greatest possible source of amusement to us,
with their curious ways.[*] I never saw such fellows to sleep; it is
a positive fact that Nojoke used frequently to take his rest coiled up
like a boa constrictor in a box at the end of the waggon, in which box
stood three iron pots with their sharp legs sticking up. On those legs
he peacefully slumbered when the waggon was going over ground that
prohibited our even stopping in it. "Scowl" was not a nice boy to look
at, for his naked back was simply cut to pieces and covered with huge
weals, of which everybody, doubtless, thought we were the cause. On
inquiring how he came to get such a tremendous thrashing, it turned
out that these Basutus have a custom of sending young men of a certain
age[+] out in couples, each armed with a good "sjambok" (a whip cut from
the hide of a sea-cow), to thrash one another till one gives in, and
that it was in one of these encounters that the intelligent Scowl got
so lacerated; but, as he remarked with a grin, "_My_ back is nothing, the
chiefs should see that of the other boy.
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