IVORY-TRADING 
31 
man could help who had his long experiences of people’s wants 
in the heart of Africa. 
Westbeech told us how twelve years ago he had arrived for 
the first time with three wagon loads of goods at the Chobe 
junction to trade with the natives. Sepopo, the king, came to 
him with many followers, and told him to take all his personal 
effects from the wagons and stack them on one side. As soon 
as this was done, Sepopo, without further question, ordered his 
men to take all the goods off the wagons and march them 
off to a town he was then occupying on the other side of the 
river, and then invited Westbeech to visit him there. Not 
knowing what course to pursue, Westbeech went over to Sepopo, 
who treated him right royally, giving him the free run of the 
country, and allowing him to shoot as many elephants as he 
liked. However, Westbeech, tiring of this, begged for leave to 
go home; but Sepopo detained him, as he said, to make friends. 
At last, after staying a year and a half, Westbeech insisted 
on leaving, when Sepopo, with many expressions of kindness and 
regret, allowed him to go. But while Westbeech was inspanning 
his wagons to depart, Sepopo came over to him with hundreds 
of bearers carrying ivory, and ordered them to pack it all on the 
wagons as a gift for Westbeech to remember him by; then, 
bidding him good-bye, with tears in his eyes, he turned and 
walked away. Westbeech realised £12,000 out of the ivory on 
his return to civilisation, a fact that induced him to return and 
settle in the Barotzi country, where he founded the Panda 
Matenga trading station. 
Panda Matenga, so named after a native chief called Panda, 
who first traded there, and ‘ tenga ’ to buy, is a little village com¬ 
posed of some thirty huts, occupied in the first instance by 
Westbeech and his hunters, some twenty in number, who scour 
the country for the fast receding elephants. Besides these, there 
are the Jesuit missionaries, who came to settle here some four 
years before our visit, and their seventeen converts, mostly 
children, whom they are educating to be carpenters, blacksmiths, 
and agriculturists—a very effective and sensible manner of raising 
