"WANT AND TEXDEFwXESS. 95 



curd produced from the milk of goats is held in high favor, a 

 fit dish for kings indeed ; for even among these poor heathen, 

 on this dead level, as we may think, of human nature, there 

 are distinctions, marked by matters as trifling as ever serve to 

 define the borders of classes in civilized society. The rich 

 master of a flock of these goats, rejoicing in his palatable dish 

 of curd-porridge, is heard to say scornfully of his poor neighbor, 

 " he is a water-porridge man." They are no better than civil- 

 ized people in this matter ; and with all our gifts, we can never 

 claim to have planted the spirit of aristocracy even in Africa. 

 It is there now, heathendom though it be, as night. 



At Nchokotsa the party found worse for bad. They left salt 

 and purgative waters at Orapa; to turn again from a filthier 

 draught, to pause at Nchokotsa wells, was to mock the thirst 

 their bitter, nitrate waters could not quench. At Koobe mat- 

 ters were hardly more promising ; but it was only a promise, 

 and might prove worthy. It was a dreary picture. There is 

 romance in it viewed from our easy chairs ; but a wide flat 

 country, over which a white sultry glare spreads, relieved only 

 by herds of scorched zebras and gnus, with here and there a 

 thirsty buffalo standing v Avith famished gaze bent toward the 

 wells, which offer to them only mud — the recent wallow of a 

 huge rhinoceros — it is hardly a landscape to charm an eye- 

 witness whose supply of water is spent. The well at Koobe 

 was that rhinoceros wallow. Livingstone paused there for 

 w r ater for men and oxen, and looked about on that withered, 

 sweltering scene. They could hardly clear a space in the dirty 

 mortar in which the oozing beverage might be collected. 

 And there were some days lost from their progress in waiting 

 on this slow fountain, before the oxen could be satiated. 



Some men would have what they might have called fine sport 

 shooting the animals, whose thirst — greater than their timidity 

 — held them close about the fascinating spot. But Livingstone 

 was no hunter. He was a nobler type of man. There was too 

 much of the spirit of Him who guideth the sparrow's wing and 

 feedeth the ravens to have pleasure in killing anything. He 

 did not scruple to shoot an animal for food, but to kill them 

 f »r the sport — he would not. The kindness of his heart was 

 manifested in the tender sympathy which refused even to pro- 



