18 SECHELE LEARNS TO READ. 



custom of his nation, when any new subject was brought before 

 them, to put questions on it ; and he begged me to allow him to 

 do the same in this case. On expressing my entire willingness 

 to answer his questions, he inquired if my forefathers knew of 

 a future judgment. I replied in the affirmative, and began to 

 describe the scene of the " great white throne, and Him who 

 shall sit on it, from whose face the heaven and earth shall flee 

 away,"&c. He said, "You startle me: these words make all 

 my bones to shake ; I have no more strength in me ; but my fore- 

 fathers were living at the same time yours were, and how is it 

 that they did not send them word about these terrible things soon- 

 er ? They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither 

 they were going." I got out of the difficulty by explaining the 

 geographical barriers in the North, and the gradual spread of 

 knowledge from the South, to which we first had access by means 

 of ships ; and I expressed my belief that, as Christ had said, the 

 whole w T orld would yet be enlightened by the Gospel. Pointing 

 to the great Kalahari desert, he said, " You never can cross that 

 country to the tribes beyond ; it is utterly impossible even for us 

 black men, except in certain seasons, when more than the usual 

 supply of rain falls, and an extraordinary growth of watermelons 

 follows. Even we who know the country would certainly perish 

 without them." Reasserting my belief in the words of Christ, we 

 parted ; and it will be seen farther on that Sechele himself assisted 

 me in crossing that desert which had previously proved an insur- 

 mountable barrier to so many adventurers. 



As soon as he had an opportunity of learning, he set himself 

 to read with such close application that, from being compara- 

 tively thin, the effect of having been fond of the chase, he 

 became quite corpulent from want of exercise. Mr. Oswell gave 

 him his first lesson in figures, and he acquired the alphabet on 

 the first day of my residence at Chonuane. He was by no 

 means an ordinary specimen of the people, for I never went into 

 the town but I was pressed to hear him read some chapters of 

 the Bible. Isaiah was a great favorite with him ; and he was 

 wont to use the same phrase nearly which the professor of 

 Greek at Glasgow, Sir D. K. Sandford, once used respecting the 

 Apostle Paul, when reading his speeches in the Acts : " He was 

 a fine fellow, that Paul!" "He was a fine man, that Isaiah; 



