16 
SECHELE LEAENS TO EEAD. 
Chap. I. 
custom of liis nation, when any new subject was brought before 
them, to put questions on it; and he begged me to allow him to 
do the same in tliis case. On expressing my entire willingness 
to answer his questions, he inqubed if my forefathers kneA¥ of 
a future judgment. I replied in the affirmative, and began to 
describe the scene of the “ great white throne, and Him who shall 
sit on it, from whose face the heaven and earth shall flee away,” 
&c. He said, You startle me—these words make all my bones 
to shake—I have no more strength in me : but my forefathers were 
living at the same time yours were, and how is it that they did 
not send them word about these terrible tilings sooner ? They all 
passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were 
going.” I got out of the difficulty by explaining the geograpliical 
barriers in the North, and the gradual spread of knowledge from 
the South, to which we first had access by means of ships; and I 
expressed my belief that, as Christ had said, the whole world 
would yet be enlightened by the Gospel. Pointing to the great 
Kalahari desert, he said, You never can cross that country to 
^ the tribes beyond; it is utterly impossible even for us black men, 
except in certain seasons, when more than the usual supply of 
rain falls, and an extraordinary growth of water-melons follows. 
Even we who know the country would certainly perish without 
them.” Re-asserting my belief in the words of Christ, we parted; 
and it will be seen further on that Sechele himself assisted me 
in crossing that desert which had previously proved an insur¬ 
mountable barrier to so many adventurers. 
As soon as he had an opportunity of learning, he set himself 
to read with such close application that, from being compara¬ 
tively thin, the effect of having been fond of the chase, he 
became quite corpulent from want of exercise. Mr. Oswell gave 
him his first lesson in figures, and he acquired the alphabet on 
the first day of my residence at Chonuane. He was by no 
means an ordinary specimen of the people, for I never went into 
the town but I was pressed to hear him read some chapters of 
the Bible. Isaiah was a great favourite with him ; and he was 
wont to use the same phrase nearly which the professor of 
Greek at Glasgow, Sir D. K. Sandford, once used respecting the 
Apostle Paul, when reading his speeches in the Acts : “ He was 
a fine fellow, that Paul!” “ He was a fine man, that Isaiah; 
