Sebituane, who had heard of the approach of his visitors, came more than a hundred miles to meet them.  He was a tall, wiry, coffee-and-milk colored man, of five-and-forty.  His original home was a thousand miles to the south, in the Bakwain country, whence he had been driven by the Griquas a quarter of a century before.  He fled northward, fighting his way, sometimes reduced to the utmost straits, but still keeping his people together.  At length he crossed the desert, and conquered the country around Lake Ngami; then having heard of white men living on the west coast, he passed southwestward into the desert, hoping to be able to open intercourse with them.  There suffering from the thirst, he came to a small well; the water was not sufficient for his men and his cattle; one or the other must perish; he ordered the men to drink, for if they survived they could fight for more cattle.  In the morning his cattle were all gone, and he returned to the north.  Here a long course of warfare awaited him, but in the end he triumphed over his enemies, and established himself for a time on the great river Zambesi.  Haunted with a longing for intercourse with the whites, he proposed to descend the river to the eastern coast.  He was dissuaded from this purpose by the warnings of a native prophet.  “The gods say, Go not thither!” he cried; then turning to the west, “I see a city and a nation of black men—­men of the water; their cattle are red; thine own tribe are perishing, and will all be consumed; thou wilt govern black men, and when thy warriors have captured the red cattle, let not their owners be killed; they are thy future tribe; let them be spared to cause thee to build.”  So Sebituane went westward, conquered the blacks of an immense region, spared the lives of the men, and made them his subjects, ruling them gently.  His original people are called the Makololo; the subject tribes are styled Makalaka.

Sebituane, though the greatest warrior in the south, always leading his men to battle in person, was still anxious for peace.  He had heard of cannon, and had somehow acquired the idea that if he could only procure one he might live in quiet.  He received his visitors with much favor.  “Your cattle have all been bitten by the tsetse,” he said, “and will die; but never mind, I will give you as many as you want.”  He offered to conduct them through his country that they might choose a site for a missionary station.  But at this moment he fell ill of an inflammation of the lungs, from which he soon died.

“He was,” writes Mr. Livingstone, “the best specimen of a native chief I ever met; and it was impossible not to follow him in thought into the world of which he had just heard when he was called away, and to realize somewhat of the feeling of those who pray for the dead.  The deep, dark question of what is to become of such as he must be left where we find it, believing that assuredly the Judge of all the earth will do right.”