xviii PREFATORY LETTER. 



Let it not be said that these, most welcome proofs of kindness, 

 on the part of the Natives, arose from fear of Sekeletu whom 

 they acknowledged as their Chief: for Dr Livingstone and his 

 whole crew met with men of the same hospitable and con- 

 fiding temper, far beyond the authority of Sekeletu — even to 

 the summit of that high table-land which parts the waters of 

 the Congo and the Zambesi. 



A man who rejoices in faithful pictures of manners, dis- 

 played by the rude untaught children of nature; who loves to 

 turn his thoughts to the forms of government by which they 

 are held in social union and obedience to their Chiefs ; to their 

 superstitious and early aspirations after a higher life ; to the 

 first rude dawnings of those passions and affections by which 

 they may be trained to good or evil: — such a man will delight 

 in the voyage of Livingstone along the Zambesi and the 

 Leeba, and his descriptions of the courts (for such they may 

 be called) of Shinte and Katema. We may laugh at the 

 domestic manners, and the grotesque ceremonials of the black 

 men. We may, perhaps, be shocked at the gods they igno- 

 rantly worship and the rude symbols of their idolatry. We 

 may pity their ill-placed confidence in trials by ordeal — fatal 

 more often to the innocent than the guilty. We may, perhaps, 

 laugh again at their belief in the transmigration of souls ; 

 when we read that there are Tribes, on the banks of the Lower 

 Zambesi, who dare not hunt the lion, lest in so doing they 

 should be hunting one who had in former times been their 

 Chief. We may, perhaps, think with self-satisfied scorn 

 of their simple faith in witchcraft, charms and sorceries, and 

 their implicit trust in quacks and rain-doctors. 



These blind feelings after knowledge — these rude distor- 

 tions of the human soul in thought and deed — were not 

 matters of mockery to Livingstone. They gave him a lesson, 

 and he knew how to read it. They prove, by a test drawn 

 from an extreme case, that the poor African is our untaught 

 Brother, created by the God who made us; and knit toge- 



