He Was An Ordinary Man, He Said, When
His Father Died, And Left Him The Chieftainship; But Directly He
Succeeded
To the high office, he was conscious of power passing into
his head, and down his back; he felt it
Enter, and knew that he was a
chief, clothed with authority, and possessed of wisdom; and people
then began to fear and reverence him. He mentioned this, as one
would a fact of natural history, any doubt being quite out of the
question. His people, too, believed in him, for they bathed in the
river without the slightest fear of crocodiles, the chief having
placed a powerful medicine there, which protected them from the bite
of these terrible reptiles.
Leaving the vessel opposite Chibisa's village, Drs. Livingstone and
Kirk and a number of the Makololo started on foot for Lake Shirwa.
They travelled in a northerly direction over a mountainous country.
The people were far from being well-disposed to them, and some of
their guides tried to mislead them, and could not be trusted.
Masakasa, a Makololo headman, overheard some remarks which satisfied
him that the guide was leading them into trouble. He was quiet till
they reached a lonely spot, when he came up to Dr. Livingstone, and
said, "That fellow is bad, he is taking us into mischief; my spear is
sharp, and there is no one here; shall I cast him into the long
grass?" Had the Doctor given the slightest token of assent, or even
kept silence, never more would any one have been led by that guide,
for in a twinkling he would have been where "the wicked cease from
troubling." It was afterwards found that in this case there was no
treachery at all, but a want of knowledge on their part of the
language and of the country.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 66 of 505
Words from 17890 to 18195
of 136856
