xliv PREFATORY LETTER. 



first claim upon her love. The cases of polygamy were 

 harder to determine; and some of the offending parties 

 were out of reach and mocked the court. Some of the hus- 

 bands who had lost their wives affected to be indifferent. 

 " Wives are as plentiful as grass, said Mashauama, and I can 

 get another ; she may go." He added, however, that if he 

 caught the fellow he would slit his ears for him. One 

 important case was referred to the judgment of Sekeletu. 

 There were many suitors for the hand of a pretty black girl; 

 and to prevent all further heart-burnings he compelled them 

 to stand in a row; and then told her to pick out the one 

 she liked best. With all gravity, and with great discretion, 

 she selected the best-looking fellow that stood up before her. 

 Sekeletu had himself been an offender, in a different 

 way, during the absence of the western expedition. He 

 had done a little work in the old and honourable trade of 

 "cattle-lifting." Dr Livingstone privately and tenderly 

 admonished him; and he confessed his fault with promises 

 of amendment. The counsel given to our Author by old 

 Motibe (the father-in-law of Sekeletu) deserves notice. 

 " Reprove your child Sekeletu," he said, "for this maraud- 

 ing. Scold him much, but don't let others hear you." 

 Without any attempt at declamation, but as the calm result 

 of long and intimate experience, Dr Livingstone concludes 

 that the poor untaught Africans "are in conduct just such 

 a strange mixture of good and evil as men are every where 

 else, and that by a selection of instances it would not be 

 difficult to make the people appear excessively good or un- 

 commonly bad." Steady principle the poor African may 

 want; and he may be liable to be borne away by savage 

 gusts of bad passion till he has been better taught. But do 

 not the facts before us — be they serious or comic — prove 

 that he is indeed our humble brother? and that we do vile 

 wrong, before God and man, when we drag him from his 

 home, and make him a slave that he may minister to the 



