PREFATORY LETTER. xxix 



Truly they are just like you, was the reply. All their fear 

 at once vanished. They went forward among the jolly 

 crew and partook of their dinner. They were allowed to 

 fire off a cannon, and were delighted to see the powerful 

 weapons with which the English put down the slave-trade. 

 The size of the brig-of-war amazed them. "It is not a 

 canoe, it is a town," was their remark; "and what sort of 

 a town is this which you must climb up into with a rope? " 

 All the way from Linyanti, the Makololo had been kind 

 and loyal to their leader; but this visit to the ships of war 

 made him stand higher still in their estimate of his authority. 

 He had to the last been faithful to them ; he was honoured 

 by his own countrymen; all their misgivings were now 

 gone ; and from that day they looked up to him with un- 

 flinching deference and fidelity. Indeed from their first 

 arrival at Loanda every one remarked the respectful gravity 

 of their deportment. They were struck with awe at the 

 sight of the large stone-bouses, the churches, and the sea. 

 A house of two stories was a thing for which they had no 

 name in their own tongue. The only houses they had 

 known were huts made out of poles stuck in the ground. 

 Describing the houses at Loanda, u these are not huts, they 

 said, but mountains, with several caves in them." But this 

 feeling of awe and wonder did not, as one might have sup- 

 posed, make them torpid and indifferent to their own place 

 and duties. Quite the contrary. For Dr Livingstone had 

 a severe relapse in the early part of the month of August, 

 1854, which again confined him to his room; and on his 

 recovery he found that the Makololo, without any hints 

 from himself, had set up a brisk trade in fire- wood. Day 

 by day they had sallied out at cock-crowing, and by morning 

 light had reached the thickets and there collected bundles 

 of fire-wood, which they brought back to the city. The 

 bundles were then made into fagots, for which they had 

 found a ready market. They were also employed, each at 



