PREFATORY LETTER. xxv 



need, to compel a treacherous ferryman to complete his 

 bargain. Many times he could have forced a supply of 

 food for his party, and cut his way through those who 

 opposed him ; but he had come on an honest mission of 

 peace, and not on one of violence and blood. Hence, 

 before he crossed the Quango, he was compelled to part 

 with his last change of linen, and every scrap of property 

 that he had a right to exchange for food ; and his black 

 friends were in like poverty, being stripped of the most 

 prized decorations of their persons. 



He knew how to maintain a good discipline, necessary 

 to his own life as well as theirs : and on one occasion when 

 there was a mutinous brawl among his men, while they 

 were feasting on an ox he had slaughtered for a Sunday 

 feast, he came from his tent, where he had been resting in 

 a state of febrile stupor, with a double-barrelled pistol in 

 his hand, and told them, " That he would maintain disci- 

 pline, though at the expense of some of their limbs ; that 

 so long as they travelled together they must remember that 

 he was Master." "There being but little room to doubt 

 his determination, they immediately became very obedient, 

 and never afterwards gave him any trouble." 



When further on their way, they all became disheart- 

 ened ; and some of the Makololo proposed that they should 

 return home. But how were they to return home through 

 the hostile country of the Chiboque ? Their property was 

 gone. Sekeletu's tusks were still with them. That pro- 

 perty had been held sacred till this day, when through 

 dire necessity they were compelled to part with a single 

 tusk. " The prospect of turning back when just on the 

 threshold of the Portuguese settlement" was too painful to 

 be endured. He used his best powers of persuasion, and 

 then declared to them that if they returned he would go 

 alone ; and he then went into his little tent to pray to God 

 for help. His true-hearted band soon followed, and with 



