Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone (interesting books to read for teens TXT) 📖

Mr. Livingstone has a republican contempt for the "King of Beasts".

He is nothing better than an overgrown hulking dog, not a match, in fair fight, for a buffalo. If a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns tail and sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound.

All the talk about his majestic roar is sheer twaddle. It takes a keen ear to distinguish the voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich.

When he is gorged he falls asleep, and a couple of natives approach him without fear. One discharges an arrow, the point of which has been anointed with a subtle poison, made of the dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while the other flings his skin cloak over his head. The beast bolts away incontinently, but soon dies, howling and biting the ground in agony. In the dark, or at all hours when breeding, the lion is an ugly enough customer; but if a man will stay at home by night, and does not go out of his way to attack him, he runs less risk in Africa of being devoured by a lion than he does in our cities of being run over by an omnibus -- so says Mr. Livingstone.

When the lion grows old he leads a miserable life. Unable to master the larger game, he prowls about the villages in the hope of picking up a stray goat. A woman of child venturing out at night does not then come amiss. When the natives hear of one prowling about the villages, they say, "His teeth are worn; he will soon kill men,"

and thereupon turn out to kill him. This is the only foundation for the common belief that when the lion has once tasted human flesh he will eat nothing else. A "man-eater" is always an old lion, who takes to cannibalism to avoid starvation. When he lives far from human habitations, and so can not get goats or children, an old lion is often reduced to such straits as to be obliged to live upon mice, and such small deer.

Mr. Livingstone's strictly missionary life among the Bakwains lasted eight or nine years. The family arose early, and, after prayers and breakfast, went to the school-room, where men, women, and children were assembled. School was over at eleven, when the husband set about his work as gardener, smith, or carpenter, while his wife busied herself with domestic matters --

baking bread, a hollow in a deserted ant-hill serving for an oven; churning butter in an earthen jar; running candles; making soap from ashes containing so little alkaline matter that the ley had to be kept boiling for a month or six weeks before it was strong enough for use. The wife was maid-of-all-work in doors, while the husband was Jack-at-all-trades outside.

Three several times the tribe removed their place of residence, and he was so many times compelled to build for himself a house, every stick and brick of which was put in place by his own hands.

The heat of the day past, and dinner over, the wife betook herself to the infant and sewing schools, while the husband walked down to the village to talk with the natives. Three nights in the week, after the cows had been milked, public meetings were held for instruction in religious and secular matters. All these multifarious duties were diversified by attendance upon the sick, and in various ways aiding the poor and wretched. Being in so many ways helpful to them, and having, besides, shown from the first that he could knock them up at hard work or traveling, we can not wonder that Livingstone was popular among the Bakwains, though conversions seem to have been of the rarest.

Indeed, we are not sure but Sechele's was the only case.

A great drought set in the very first year of his residence among them, which increased year by year. The river ran dry; the canals which he had induced them to dig for the purpose of irrigating their gardens were useless; the fish died in such numbers that the congregated hyenas of the country were unable to devour the putrid masses.

The rain-makers tried their spells in vain. The clouds sometimes gathered promisingly overhead, but only to roll away without discharging a drop upon the scorched plains. The people began to suspect some connection between the new religion and the drought. "We like you," they said, "but we wish you would give up this everlasting preaching and praying. You see that we never get any rain, while the tribes who never pray have an abundance."

Livingstone could not deny the fact, and he was sometimes disposed to attribute it to the malevolence of the "Prince of the Power of the Air", eager to frustrate the good work.

The people behaved wonderfully well, though the scarcity amounted almost to famine. The women sold their ornaments to buy corn from the more fortunate tribes around; the children scoured the country for edible roots; the men betook themselves to hunting. They constructed great traps, called `hopos', consisting of two lines of hedges, a mile long, far apart at the extremities, but converging like the sides of the letter V, with a deep pit at the narrow end. Then forming a circuit for miles around, they drove the game -- buffaloes, zebras, gnus, antelopes, and the like --

into the mouth of the hopo, and along its narrowing lane, until they plunged pell-mell in one confused, writhing, struggling mass into the pit, where they were speared at leisure.

The precarious mode of life occasioned by the long drought interfered sadly with the labors of the mission. Still worse was the conduct of Boers who had pushed their way into the Bechuana country. Their theory was very simple: "We are the people of God, and the heathen are given to us for an inheritance." Of this inheritance they proceeded to make the most.

They compelled the natives to work for them without pay, in consideration of the privilege of living in "their country".

They made regular forays, carrying off the women and children as slaves.

They were cowardly as well as brutal, compelling friendly tribes to accompany them on their excursions, putting them in front as a shield, and coolly firing over their heads, till the enemy fled in despair, leaving their women, children, and cattle as a prey.

So long as fire-arms could be kept from the natives the Boers were sure of having it all their own way. But traders came in the train of the missionaries, and sold guns and powder to the Bechuanas.

Sechele's tribe procured no less than five muskets. The Boers were alarmed, and determined to drive missionaries and traders from the country.

In course of time Mr. Livingstone became convinced that Bibles and preaching were not all that was necessary.

Civilization must accompany Christianization; and commerce was essential to civilization; for commerce, more speedily than any thing else, would break down the isolation of the tribes, by making them mutually dependent upon and serviceable to each other.

It was well known that northward, beyond the desert, lay a great lake, in the midst of a country rich in ivory and other articles of commerce.

In former years, when rains had been more abundant, the natives had frequently crossed this desert; and somewhere near the lake dwelt a famous chief, named Sebituane, who had once lived on friendly terms in the neighborhood of Sechele, who was anxious to renew the old acquaintance.

Mr. Livingstone determined to open intercourse with this region, in spite of the threats and opposition of the Boers.

So the missionary became a traveler and explorer. While laying his plans and gathering information, the opportune arrival of Messrs. Oswell and Murray, two wealthy Englishmen who had become enamored with African hunting, enabled him to undertake the proposed expedition, Mr. Oswell agreeing to pay the guides, who were furnished by Sechele.

This expedition, which resulted in the discovery of Lake Ngami, set out from the missionary station at Kolobeng on the 1st of June, 1849.

The way lay across the great Kalahari desert, seven hundred miles in breadth.

This is a singular region. Though it has no running streams, and few and scanty wells, it abounds in animal and vegetable life.

Men, animals, and plants accommodate themselves singularly to the scarcity of water. Grass is abundant, growing in tufts; bulbous plants abound, among which are the leroshua', which sends up a slender stalk not larger than a crow quill, with a tuber, a foot or more below the surface, as large as a child's head, consisting of a mass of cellular tissue filled with a cool and refreshing fluid; and themokuri', which deposits under ground, within a circle of a yard from its stem, a mass of tubers of the size of a man's head.

During years when the rains are unusually abundant, the Kalahari is covered with the `kengwe', a species of water-melon. Animals and men rejoice in the rich supply; antelopes, lions, hyenas, jackals, mice, and men devour it with equal avidity.

The people of the desert conceal their wells with jealous care.

They fill them with sand, and place their dwellings at a distance, that their proximity may not betray the precious secret.

The women repair to the wells with a score or so of ostrich shells in a bag slung over their shoulders. Digging down an arm's-length, they insert a hollow reed, with a bunch of grass tied to the end, then ram the sand firmly around the tube. The water slowly filters into the bunch of grass, and is sucked up through the reed, and squirted mouthful by mouthful into the shells. When all are filled, the women gather up their load and trudge homeward.

Elands, springbucks, koodoos, and ostriches somehow seem to get along very well without any moisture, except that contained in the grass which they eat. They appear to live for months without drinking; but whenever rhinoceroses, buffaloes, or gnus are seen, it is held to be certain proof that water exists within a few miles.

The passage of the Kalahari was effected, not without considerable difficulty, in two months, the expedition reaching Lake Ngami on the 1st of August.

As they approached it, they came upon a considerable river.

"Whence does this come?" asked Livingstone.

"From a country full of rivers," was the reply; "so many that no man can tell their number, and full of large trees."

This was the first actual confirmation of the report of the Bakwains that the country beyond was not the large "sandy plateau" of geographers.

The prospect of a highway capable of being traversed by boats to an unexplored fertile region so filled the mind of Livingstone that, when he came to the lake, this discovery seemed of comparatively little importance. To us, indeed, whose ideas of a lake are formed from Superior and Huron, the Ngami seems but an insignificant affair.

Its circumference may be seventy or a hundred miles, and its mean depth is but a few feet. It lies two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and as much below the southern border of the Kalahari, which slopes gradually toward the interior.

Their desire to visit Sebituane, whose residence was considerably farther in the interior, was frustrated by the jealousy of Lechulatebe, a chief near the lake, and the expedition returned to the station at Kolobeng.

The attempt was renewed the following year. Mrs. Livingstone, their three children, and Sechele accompanied him. The lake was reached.

Lechulatebe, propitiated