A CHARMING HOME. 



149 



At the village of one Soana Molopo, they were a little 

 troubled through the guide who had been sent on from Shinte, 

 who made it his business to excite in every chief's mind the ex- 

 pectation of valuable gifts from the traveller. At the home of 

 a subject of Katema, Livingstone enjoyed a singular surprise : 

 this man Mozinkwa possessed intelligence far in advance of his 

 surroundings, and sharing his happiness was one wife, the 

 mother of all his children. Around the house this good lady 

 had quite a crop of cotton ; and Mozinkwa's gardens and 

 hedges and court-yard showed that he too could handle useful 

 implements. They had also a garden of splendid potatoes, 

 while some large shade-trees, planted in the middle of their 

 yard, indicated that this fine family sought comfort intelligently ; 

 but alas ! brightest pictures fade; in a few months death came — 

 death comes to all — death came and the mother and wife whose 

 faithfulness had been the joy of the home was laid away in 

 silence and darkness. We who look in the grave filled with the 

 light of the cross do not know how dark it is for the heathen. 

 After death has once crossed a Balonda threshold, the house has 

 no longer any charms for the inmates, and the invariable cus- 

 tom is to abandon it. This superstitious horror of death causes 

 whole villages and towns to be abandoned at the most unex- 

 pected moment ; within one week or month the town where a 

 traveller was entertained most hospitably, which was teeming 

 with happy people, he may find desolate, abandoned, dreaded, 

 and avoided even by the path, which has been changed. A ques- 

 tion finds the explanation in the death of some chief man. This 

 suggests a feature of Balonda superstition which presents a 

 serious barrier to the gospel. While these people believe in 

 God, and seem to recognize the immortality of the soul, they 

 seem almost incapable of a single idea of heaven. They only 

 think of the dead as lingering about the familiar scenes of earth. 

 They seem painfully conscious of their nearness. They cannot 

 think of another world. Their ignorance holds them in a con- 

 stant bondage of fear ; they think of the departed as vindictive, 

 of their gods as full of vengeance, of their charms as summon- 

 ing some unknown evil. Indeed in all heathen lands there is a 

 painful ignorance of love, and hardly wonderful either, since 

 only the poor sinful hearts must suggest their ideals or inter- 



