Chap. IX. SEKELETU'S PRESENT. 189 



the mysterious Look. To all who have not acquired it, the know- 

 ledge of letters is quite unfathomable ; there is nought like it 

 within the compass of their observation ; and we have no com- 

 parison with anything except pictures, to aid them in compre- 

 hending the idea of signs of words. It seems to them super- 

 natural that we see in a book things taking place, or having 

 occurred at a distance. No amount of explanation conveys the 

 idea unless they learn to read. Machinery is equally inex- 

 plicable, and money nearly as much so until they see it in actual 

 use. They are familiar with barter alone ; and in the centre of 

 the country, where gold is totally unknown, if a button and 

 sovereign were left to their choice, they would prefer the former 

 on account of its having an eye. 



In beginning to learn, Motibe seemed to himself in the posi- 

 tion of the doctor, who was obliged to drink his potion before the 

 patient, to show that it contained nothing detrimental : after he 

 had mastered the alphabet, and reported the thing so far safe, 

 Sekeletu and his young companions came forward to try for 

 themselves. He must have resolved to watch the effects of the 

 book against his views on polygamy, and abstain whenever he 

 perceived any tendency, in reading it, towards enforcing him to 

 put his wives away. A number of men learned the alphabet in 

 a short time and were set to teach others, but before much pro- 

 gress could be made I was on my way to Loanda. 



As I had declined to name anything as a present from 

 Sekeletu, except a canoe to take me up the river, he brought 

 ten fine elephants' tusks and laid them down beside my waggon. 

 He would take no denial, though I told him I should prefer to 

 see him trading with Fleming, a man of colour from the West 

 Indies, who had come for the purpose. I had during the eleven 

 years of my previous course invariably abstained from taking pre- 

 sents of ivory, from an idea that a religious instructor degraded 

 himself by accepting gifts from those whose spiritual welfare he 

 professed to seek. My precedence of all traders in the line of 

 discovery put me often in the way of very handsome offers, but 

 I always advised the donors to sell their ivory to traders, who 

 would be sure to follow, and when at some future time they had 

 become rich by barter, they might remember me or my children. 

 When Lake Ngami was discovered I might have refused per- 

 mission to a trader who accompanied us ; but when he applied 



