Only let him make rain this once, and we shall all, men, women, and children, come to the school, and sing and pray as long as you please." It was in vain to protest that I wished Sechele to act just according to his own ideas of what was right, as he found the law laid down in the Bible, and it was distressing to appear hard-hearted to them.

The clouds often collected promisingly over us, and rolling thunder seemed to portend refreshing showers, but next morning the sun would rise in a clear, cloudless sky; indeed, even these lowering appearances were less frequent by far than days of sunshine are in London.
The natives, finding it irksome to sit and wait helplessly until God gives them rain from heaven, entertain the more comfortable idea that they can help themselves by a variety of preparations, such as charcoal made of burned bats, inspissated renal deposit of the mountain cony--'Hyrax capensis'-- (which, by the way, is used, in the form of pills, as a good antispasmodic, under the name of "stone-sweat"*), the internal parts of different animals--as jackals' livers, baboons' and lions' hearts, and hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows--serpents' skins and vertebrae, and every kind of tuber, bulb, root, and plant to be found in the country.

Although you disbelieve their efficacy in charming the clouds to pour out their refreshing treasures, yet, conscious that civility is useful every where, you kindly state that you think they are mistaken as to their power.

The rain-doctor selects a particular bulbous root, pounds it, and administers a cold infusion to a sheep, which in five minutes afterward expires in convulsions.

Part of the same bulb is converted into smoke, and ascends toward the sky; rain follows in a day or two.