144 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
character. Surrounded by his tribesinen, he stood irresolute 
and quite overcome in the presence of two ordinary-looking 
Europeans. Livingstone entered at once into conversation 
with him, and by degrees partly reassured him ; but throughout 
that day and the next, a sad, half-scared look never faded from 
his face. He had wished us to visit him, had sent an am- 
bassage to Livingstone at Kolobeng, but the reality of our 
coming, with all its possibilities, dangers, and advantages seemed. 
to flit through the man’s mind as in a vision. He killed an ox 
for us, and treated us right royally ; he was far and away the 
finest Kafir I ever saw in mien and manner. 
He had been told that Livingstone and I occasionally wrote 
aletter to one another, if by chance we were separated for a day 
or two and wished to communicate or arrange a meeting at a 
certain point, and asked us if his information were true that we 
could make one another hear when far apart, and if we could 
give him an example of our power. Livingstone took a man 
out of even Kafir earshot, four or five hundred yards away, and 
then whisperingly asked him his own and his wife’s name, and 
writing them on a scrap of paper sent him to me. ‘Well, 
Ra’chobe, and how is Seboni your wife?’ I asked. The chief 
and his headmen, who were gathered expectant round, were 
amazed and somewhat frightened, taking it for magic, though 
they soon got over it. 
It does not do to introduce Kafirs too suddenly to the 
common things of civilised life. I once lost an admiring 
audience by an act of this kind. A laughing circle was 
round me, and I was dispensing beads, brass wire, and tiny 
looking-glasses to ingratiate myself with a new tribe, the 
Macoba, when by way of amusing them I took a burning-glass 
from my pocket and ignited a pinch of gunpowder strewed on 
the waggon-box, telling them what I was going to do, and 
preparing them for it. With the puff, man, woman, and child 
vanished ; it was days before I could regain their confidence, 
and throughout my stay with them I was looked upon with awe 
as the wizard of the sun, 
