Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, David Livingstone [novels for teenagers .TXT] 📗

the centre. Even the plains between Linyanti and Sesheke had not yet been freed from the waters of the inundation. They had risen higher than usual, and for a long time canoes passed from the one place to the other, a distance of upward of 120 miles, in nearly a straight line.

We found many patches of stagnant water, which, when disturbed by our passing through them, evolved strong effluvia of sulphureted hydrogen.

At other times these spots exhibit an efflorescence of the nitrate of soda; they also contain abundance of lime, probably from decaying vegetable matter, and from these may have emanated the malaria which caused the present sickness. I have often remarked this effluvium in sickly spots, and can not help believing but that it has some connection with fever, though I am quite aware of Dr. MacWilliams's unsuccessful efforts to discover sulphureted hydrogen, by the most delicate tests, in the Niger expedition.

I had plenty of employment, for, besides attending to the severer cases, I had perpetual calls on my attention. The town contained at least 7000 inhabitants, and every one thought that he might come, and at least look at me. In talking with some of the more intelligent in the evenings, the conversation having turned from inquiries respecting eclipses of the sun and moon to that other world where Jesus reigns, they let me know that my attempts to enlighten them had not been without some small effect. "Many of the children," said they, "talk about the strange things you bring to their ears, but the old men show a little opposition by saying, `Do we know what he is talking about?'"

Ntlaria and others complain of treacherous memories, and say, "When we hear words about other things, we hold them fast; but when we hear you tell much more wonderful things than any we have ever heard before, we don't know how it is, they run away from our hearts."

These are the more intelligent of my Makololo friends.

On the majority the teaching produces no appreciable effect; they assent to the truth with the most perplexing indifference, adding, "But we don't know," or, "We do not understand."

My medical intercourse with them enabled me to ascertain their moral status better than a mere religious teacher could do. They do not attempt to hide the evil, as men often do, from their spiritual instructors; but I have found it difficult to come to a conclusion on their character.

They sometimes perform actions remarkably good, and sometimes as strangely the opposite. I have been unable to ascertain the motive for the good, or account for the callousness of conscience with which they perpetrate the bad. After long observation, I came to the conclusion that they are just such a strange mixture of good and evil as men are every where else. There is not among them an approach to that constant stream of benevolence flowing from the rich to the poor which we have in England, nor yet the unostentatious attentions which we have among our own poor to each other. Yet there are frequent instances of genuine kindness and liberality, as well as actions of an opposite character. The rich show kindness to the poor in expectation of services, and a poor person who has no relatives will seldom be supplied even with water in illness, and, when dead, will be dragged out to be devoured by the hyaenas instead of being buried.

Relatives alone will condescend to touch a dead body. It would be easy to enumerate instances of inhumanity which I have witnessed.

An interesting-looking girl came to my wagon one day in a state of nudity, and almost a skeleton. She was a captive from another tribe, and had been neglected by the man who claimed her. Having supplied her wants, I made inquiry for him, and found that he had been unsuccessful in raising a crop of corn, and had no food to give her. I volunteered to take her; but he said he would allow me to feed her and make her fat, and then take her away. I protested against his heartlessness; and, as he said he could "not part with his child," I was precluded from attending to her wants. In a day or two she was lost sight of.

She had gone out a little way from the town, and, being too weak to return, had been cruelly left to perish. Another day I saw a poor boy going to the water to drink, apparently in a starving condition.

This case I brought before the chief in council, and found that his emaciation was ascribed to disease and want combined. He was not one of the Makololo, but a member of a subdued tribe. I showed them that any one professing to claim a child, and refusing proper nutriment, would be guilty of his death.

Sekeletu decided that the owner of this boy should give up his alleged right rather than destroy the child. When I took him he was so far gone as to be in the cold stage of starvation, but was soon brought round by a little milk given three or four times a day. On leaving Linyanti I handed him over to the charge of his chief, Sekeletu, who feeds his servants very well. On the other hand, I have seen instances in which both men and women have taken up little orphans and carefully reared them as their own children. By a selection of cases of either kind, it would not be difficult to make these people appear excessively good or uncommonly bad.

I still possessed some of the coffee which I had brought from Angola, and some of the sugar which I had left in my wagon. So long as the sugar lasted, Sekeletu favored me with his company at meals; but the sugar soon came to a close. The Makololo, as formerly mentioned, were well acquainted with the sugar-cane, as it is cultivated by the Barotse, but never knew that sugar could be got from it. When I explained the process by which it was produced, Sekeletu asked if I could not buy him an apparatus for the purpose of making sugar. He said that he would plant the cane largely if he only had the means of making the sugar from it. I replied that I was unable to purchase a mill, when he instantly rejoined, "Why not take ivory to buy it?" As I had been living at his expense, I was glad of the opportunity to show my gratitude by serving him; and when he and his principal men understood that I was willing to execute a commission, Sekeletu gave me an order for a sugar-mill, and for all the different varieties of clothing that he had ever seen, especially a mohair coat, a good rifle, beads, brass-wire, etc., etc., and wound up by saying, "And any other beautiful thing you may see in your own country." As to the quantity of ivory required to execute the commission, I said I feared that a large amount would be necessary.

Both he and his councilors replied, "The ivory is all your own; if you leave any in the country it will be your own fault."

He was also anxious for horses. The two I had left with him when I went to Loanda were still living, and had been of great use to him in hunting the giraffe and eland, and he was now anxious to have a breed.

This, I thought, might be obtained at the Portuguese settlements.

All were very much delighted with the donkeys we had brought from Loanda.

As we found that they were not affected by the bite of the tsetse, and there was a prospect of the breed being continued, it was gratifying to see the experiment of their introduction so far successful.

The donkeys came as frisky as kids all the way from Loanda until we began to descend the Leeambye. There we came upon so many interlacing branches of the river, and were obliged to drag them through such masses of tangled aquatic plants, that we half drowned them, and were at last obliged to leave them somewhat exhausted at Naliele.

They excited the unbounded admiration of my men by their knowledge of the different kinds of plants, which, as they remarked, "the animals had never before seen in their own country;"

and when the donkeys indulged in their music, they startled the inhabitants more than if they had been lions. We never rode them, nor yet the horse which had been given by the bishop, for fear of hurting them by any work.

Although the Makololo were so confiding, the reader must not imagine that they would be so to every individual who might visit them.

Much of my influence depended upon the good name given me by the Bakwains, and that I secured only through a long course of tolerably good conduct.

No one ever gains much influence in this country without purity and uprightness. The acts of a stranger are keenly scrutinized by both young and old, and seldom is the judgment pronounced, even by the heathen, unfair or uncharitable. I have heard women speaking in admiration of a white man because he was pure, and never was guilty of any secret immorality. Had he been, they would have known it, and, untutored heathen though they be, would have despised him in consequence. Secret vice becomes known throughout the tribe; and while one, unacquainted with the language, may imagine a peccadillo to be hidden, it is as patent to all as it would be in London had he a placard on his back.

27TH OCTOBER, 1855. The first continuous rain of the season commenced during the night, the wind being from the N.E., as it always was on like occasions at Kolobeng. The rainy season was thus begun, and I made ready to go. The mother of Sekeletu prepared a bag of ground-nuts, by frying them in cream with a little salt, as a sort of sandwiches for my journey. This is considered food fit for a chief.

Others ground the maize from my own garden into meal, and Sekeletu pointed out Sekwebu and Kanyata as the persons who should head the party intended to form my company. Sekwebu had been captured by the Matebele when a little boy, and the tribe in which he was a captive had migrated to the country near Tete; he had traveled along both banks of the Zambesi several times, and was intimately acquainted with the dialects spoken there.

I found him to be a person of great prudence and sound judgment, and his subsequent loss at the Mauritius has been, ever since, a source of sincere regret. He at once recommended our keeping well away from the river, on account of the tsetse and rocky country, assigning also as a reason for it that the Leeambye beyond the falls turns round to the N.N.E. Mamire, who had married the mother of Sekeletu, on coming to bid me farewell before starting, said, "You are now going among people who can not be trusted because we have used them badly; but you go with a different message from any they ever heard before, and Jesus will be with you and help you, though among enemies; and if he carries you safely, and brings you and Ma Robert back again, I shall say he has bestowed a great favor upon me. May we obtain a path whereby we may visit and be visited by other tribes, and by white men!"

On telling him my fears