246 
THE NEW AFRICA 
was a myth, and the difficulties held up to us on the route to 
the West Coast much magnified. Intuhe had his reasons, and 
when we declared as a test that, spite of his advice, we should 
proceed up the river, he informed us that in this case he would 
have to join Indala in preventing such a course being carried 
out, and that we must go to the lake. Plainly speaking, he had 
orders from the king of the lake to send us there! We heard 
from some of our boys, whom we sent out to spy into Intuhe’s 
affairs, that he had quite an army of men, over three hundred 
in fact, and that we were taken for Matabele spies. Intuhe’s men 
told our boys that there was a white man somewhere in the 
country travelling with three Matabele spies, whom they would 
kill as soon as they met with them. Involuntarily I thought 
of Paul and the indiscretions of the Matabele Makalaka Styr- 
man, who on the voyage up the Chobe indulged the sense of 
humour by bickering with the Mashubia in that obnoxious 
language, but could hardly credit the fact that this news could 
have already reached the lake, so many miles away. However, 
one of the strangest things in the world is how quickly news 
will travel amongst the natives. 
In the afternoon I let the king know that we would leave in 
the morning, and called over to the island that I wished to visit 
him. But the Mombokooshus, evidently not liking my treat¬ 
ment of Libebe, answered that the king was away. 
The upshot of the whole situation was that we asked Intuhe 
to give us two guides to take us to the lake, when he quietly 
informed us that he had already sent for them, and that they 
would be with us shortly. We thanked him, and offered him 
several small presents of things that we could well spare. He 
refused to accept anything, saying that as we were both in the 
veldt, it was not right that he should deprive us of our neces¬ 
saries. But if we would lend him our saw for a while to cut his 
horses’ hoofs with, he would return it, and be much beholden to 
us for the kindness. 
Intuhe is the first and only native I have met—always 
excepting Khama—who during all my wanderings in South 
