432 HECOUDS OF SOUTH-EAST AFRICA. 



have produced the South-East Africa Records, and this would, of 

 course, have made the work more valuable from many points of 

 view. 



How much easier it is to imagine betterment than to procure 

 it, and how much wiser are they who use patience with the 

 means they have, and encourage their workers who have already 

 given much time and care to making themselves as ethcient 

 as they can through years of research in a wide matter such as 

 South African history! Not only has no one done Dr. TheaTs 

 work better, but no one has continued it, no one has even 

 re-edited it, while everyone has built upon it in this department, 

 as Prof. Walker, I think the latest worker, frankly acknowledges 

 for his own part in notes on the map of Portuguese East Africa 

 and native migrations. 



And how wonderful a vista of history even the mere collec- 

 tion and translation of these records, through the care of the 

 Doctor, has opened up to the English reader! No modern 

 historian's description could equal the heartrending tales of 

 ship\\reck, authenticated by survivors, which again and again meet 

 us in the pages of the South-East Eecords. And these we have 

 every reason to remember at Louren^o Marques, where the weary 

 journeys of lost seamen and passengers, after many thrilling 

 escapes, so often ended; ended sometimes fatally so near to 

 port as Inyack across the Bay. Who shall match the thrill of 

 those moments, when the 'nurse upon the sinking ship holds up 

 the child the mother in the boat yearns to save, though the 

 condition the nurse makes that she also must be saved is an 

 impossible one for the over-crowded boat? Or where Manuel da- 

 Sousa, unhappy nobleman, has to turn his back upon liis half- 

 caste son. 



Or again, where, in the record of great spiritual enterprise, 

 fraught with large issues to the civilisation of a sub-continent 

 (issues — alas I we must confess it — grievously disappointing) shall 

 we find a match to that most tragic story of Don Gonzalo, of 

 triumph in martyrdom, and yet (through the unworthiness of 

 successors, we cannot help feeling, yet who shall judge in the 

 tangle of history?) martyrdom in some sort in vain? But we 

 may not do more here than refer you to Theal's 2nd volume for 

 that heroic adventure of a lofty, perhaps too other-worldly soul 

 — but again it is hard to judge heroes : every stage in da Silveira's 

 career is an epitome of great-souled devotion, till the day when 

 the Monomotapa's minions did him to death in the present 

 Mashonaland. It is easy to say that anthropology would have 

 saved the Jesuit Missions and others some mistakes in dealing 

 with the Native, but the science was in embryo at the time, and 

 has hardly yet come to birth. (Our first South African Professor 

 in the subject has but just been appointed.) Easy it is to be 

 wise after the fact ! 



Now all this treasure would be lost to English students, at 

 least, were it not for Dr. Theal : let those who spurn the rungs 

 by which the ladder of knowledge has been climbed say why, 

 since his publication, tliey have not provided better work. And 

 let those, who are ready to build his sepulchre as a prophet, 

 remember how ready the powers that be were to kill, not long 

 ago, that prophet's work, and to maim his opportunities. 



