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

Of the chiefs who escaped, he said, "They love Mosilikatse, let them live with him: the Zambesi is my line of defense;"

and men were placed all along it as sentinels. When he heard of our wish to visit him, he did all he could to assist our approach.

Sechele, Sekomi, and Lechulatebe owed their lives to his clemency; and the latter might have paid dearly for his obstructiveness.

Sebituane knew every thing that happened in the country, for he had the art of gaining the affections both of his own people and of strangers.

When a party of poor men came to his town to sell their hoes or skins, no matter how ungainly they might be, he soon knew them all.

A company of these indigent strangers, sitting far apart from the Makololo gentlemen around the chief, would be surprised to see him come alone to them, and, sitting down, inquire if they were hungry.

He would order an attendant to bring meal, milk, and honey, and, mixing them in their sight, in order to remove any suspicion from their minds, make them feast, perhaps for the first time in their lives, on a lordly dish.

Delighted beyond measure with his affability and liberality, they felt their hearts warm toward him, and gave him all the information in their power; and as he never allowed a party of strangers to go away without giving every one of them, servants and all, a present, his praises were sounded far and wide. "He has a heart! he is wise!"

were the usual expressions we heard before we saw him.

He was much pleased with the proof of confidence we had shown in bringing our children, and promised to take us to see his country, so that we might choose a part in which to locate ourselves. Our plan was, that I should remain in the pursuit of my objects as a missionary, while Mr. Oswell explored the Zambesi to the east. Poor Sebituane, however, just after realizing what he had so long ardently desired, fell sick of inflammation of the lungs, which originated in and extended from an old wound got at Melita. I saw his danger, but, being a stranger, I feared to treat him medically, lest, in the event of his death, I should be blamed by his people. I mentioned this to one of his doctors, who said, "Your fear is prudent and wise; this people would blame you."

He had been cured of this complaint, during the year before, by the Barotse making a large number of free incisions in the chest.

The Makololo doctors, on the other hand, now scarcely cut the skin.

On the Sunday afternoon in which he died, when our usual religious service was over, I visited him with my little boy Robert. "Come near,"

said Sebituane, "and see if I am any longer a man. I am done."

He was thus sensible of the dangerous nature of his disease, so I ventured to assent, and added a single sentence regarding hope after death.

"Why do you speak of death?" said one of a relay of fresh doctors; "Sebituane will never die." If I had persisted, the impression would have been produced that by speaking about it I wished him to die.

After sitting with him some time, and commending him to the mercy of God, I rose to depart, when the dying chieftain, raising himself up a little from his prone position, called a servant, and said, "Take Robert to Maunku (one of his wives), and tell her to give him some milk."

These were the last words of Sebituane.

We were not informed of his death until the next day.

The burial of a Bechuana chief takes place in his cattle-pen, and all the cattle are driven for an hour or two around and over the grave, so that it may be quite obliterated. We went and spoke to the people, advising them to keep together and support the heir. They took this kindly; and in turn told us not to be alarmed, for they would not think of ascribing the death of their chief to us; that Sebituane had just gone the way of his fathers; and though the father had gone, he had left children, and they hoped that we would be as friendly to his children as we intended to have been to himself.

He was decidedly the best specimen of a native chief I ever met.

I never felt so much grieved by the loss of a black man before; and it was impossible not to follow him in thought into the world of which he had just heard before he was called away, and to realize somewhat of the feelings of those who pray for the dead.

The deep, dark question of what is to become of such as he, must, however, be left where we find it, believing that, assuredly, the "Judge of all the earth will do right."

At Sebituane's death the chieftainship devolved, as her father intended, on a daughter named Ma-mochisane. He had promised to show us his country and to select a suitable locality for our residence. We had now to look to the daughter, who was living twelve days to the north, at Naliele.

We were obliged, therefore, to remain until a message came from her; and when it did, she gave us perfect liberty to visit any part of the country we chose. Mr. Oswell and I then proceeded one hundred and thirty miles to the northeast, to Sesheke; and in the end of June, 1851, we were rewarded by the discovery of the Zambesi, in the centre of the continent.

This was a most important point, for that river was not previously known to exist there at all. The Portuguese maps all represent it as rising far to the east of where we now were; and if ever any thing like a chain of trading stations had existed across the country between the latitudes 12 Deg. and 18 Deg. south, this magnificent portion of the river must have been known before. We saw it at the end of the dry season, at the time when the river is about at its lowest, and yet there was a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred yards of deep flowing water.

Mr. Oswell said he had never seen such a fine river, even in India.

At the period of its annual inundation it rises fully twenty feet in perpendicular height, and floods fifteen or twenty miles of lands adjacent to its banks.

The country over which we had traveled from the Chobe was perfectly flat, except where there were large ant-hills, or the remains of former ones, which had left mounds a few feet high. These are generally covered with wild date-trees and palmyras, and in some parts there are forests of mimosae and mopane. Occasionally the country between the Chobe and Zambesi is flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying near the Chobe or on its banks.

The Makololo were living among these swamps for the sake of the protection the deep reedy rivers afforded them against their enemies.

Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement for myself, I could not conscientiously ask them to abandon their defenses for my convenience alone. The healthy districts were defenseless, and the safe localities were so deleterious to human life, that the original Basutos had nearly all been cut off by the fever; I therefore feared to subject my family to the scourge.

As we were the very first white men the inhabitants had ever seen, we were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first who came to see us was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico.

Many of the Makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red baize, and also of printed cottons; on inquiry, we learned that these had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari, which is situated near Bihe. This tribe began the slave-trade with Sebituane only in 1850, and but for the unwillingness of Lechulatebe to allow us to pass, we should have been with Sebituane in time to have prevented it from commencing at all. The Mambari visited in ancient times the chief of the Barotse, whom Sebituane conquered, and he refused to allow any one to sell a child. They never came back again till 1850; and as they had a number of old Portuguese guns marked "Legitimo de Braga", which Sebituane thought would be excellent in any future invasion of Matebele, he offered to purchase them with cattle or ivory, but the Mambari refused every thing except boys about fourteen years of age.

The Makololo declare they never heard of people being bought and sold till then, and disliked it, but the desire to possess the guns prevailed, and eight old guns were exchanged for as many boys; these were not their own children, but captives of the black races they had conquered.

I have never known in Africa an instance of a parent selling his own offspring. The Makololo were afterward incited to make a foray against some tribes to the eastward; the Mambari bargaining to use their guns in the attack for the captives they might take, and the Makololo were to have all the cattle. They went off with at least two hundred slaves that year. During this foray the Makololo met some Arabs from Zanzibar, who presented them with three English muskets, and in return received about thirty of their captives.

In talking with my companions over these matters, the idea was suggested that, if the slave-market were supplied with articles of European manufacture by legitimate commerce, the trade in slaves would become impossible.

It seemed more feasible to give the goods, for which the people now part with their servants, in exchange for ivory and other products of the country, and thus prevent the trade at the beginning, than to try to put a stop to it at any of the subsequent steps. This could only be effected by establishing a highway from the coast into the centre of the country.

As there was no hope of the Boers allowing the peaceable instruction of the natives at Kolobeng, I at once resolved to save my family from exposure to this unhealthy region by sending them to England, and to return alone, with a view to exploring the country in search of a healthy district that might prove a centre of civilization, and open up the interior by a path to either the east or west coast.

This resolution led me down to the Cape in April, 1852, being the first time during eleven years that I had visited the scenes of civilization. Our route to Cape Town led us to pass through the centre of the colony during the twentieth month of a Caffre war; and if those who periodically pay enormous sums for these inglorious affairs wish to know how our little unprotected party could quietly travel through the heart of the colony to the capital with as little sense or sign of danger as if we had been in England, they must engage a "`Times' Special Correspondent" for the next outbreak to explain where the money goes, and who have been benefited by the blood and treasure expended.

Having placed my family on board a homeward-bound ship, and promised to rejoin them in two years, we parted, for, as it subsequently proved, nearly five years. The Directors of the London Missionary Society signified their cordial approval of my project by leaving the matter entirely to my own discretion; and I have much pleasure