As the name was found in use among those who had no intercourse with Europeans, before we can receive the above explanation we must believe that the unknown traveler knew the language sufficiently well to ask a question, but not to understand the answer.  We may add, that the way in which they still continue to use the word seems to require no fanciful interpretation.  When addressed with any degree of scorn, they reply, “We are Bachuana, or equals—­we are not inferior to any of our nation,” in exactly the same sense as Irishmen or Scotchmen, in the same circumstances, would reply, “We are Britons,” or “We are Englishmen.”  Most other tribes are known by the terms applied to them by strangers only, as the Caffres, Hottentots, and Bushmen.  The Bechuanas alone use the term to themselves as a generic one for the whole nation.  They have managed, also, to give a comprehensive name to the whites, viz., Makoa, though they can not explain the derivation of it any more than of their own.  It seems to mean “handsome”, from the manner in which they use it to indicate beauty; but there is a word so very like it meaning “infirm”, or “weak”, that Burchell’s conjecture is probably the right one.  “The different Hottentot tribes were known by names terminating in ‘kua’, which means ‘man’, and the Bechuanas simply added the prefix Ma, denoting a nation.”  They themselves were first known as Briquas, or “goat-men”.  The language of the Bechuanas is termed Sichuana; that of the whites (or Makoa) is called Sekoa.

The Makololo, or Basuto, have carried their powers of generalization still farther, and arranged the other parts of the same great family of South Africans into three divisions:  1st.  The Matebele, or Makonkobi—­the Caffre family living on the eastern side of the country; 2d.  The Bakoni, or Basuto; and, 3d.  The Bakalahari, or Bechuanas, living in the central parts, which includes all those tribes living in or adjacent to the great Kalahari Desert.

1st.  The Caffres are divided by themselves into various subdivisions, as Amakosa, Amapanda, and other well-known titles.  They consider the name Caffre as an insulting epithet.

The Zulus of Natal belong to the same family, and they are as famed for their honesty as their brethren who live adjacent to our colonial frontier are renowned for cattle-lifting.  The Recorder of Natal declared of them that history does not present another instance in which so much security for life and property has been enjoyed, as has been experienced, during the whole period of English occupation, by ten thousand colonists, in the midst of one hundred thousand Zulus.

The Matebele of Mosilikatse, living a short distance south of the Zambesi, and other tribes living a little south of Tete and Senna, are members of this same family.  They are not known beyond the Zambesi River.  This was the limit of the Bechuana progress north too, until Sebituane pushed his conquests farther.