A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864Livingstone, David
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A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864
Livingstone, David
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, Central -- Discovery and exploration
Sekeletu was well pleased with the various articles we brought for him,
and inquired if a ship could not bring his sugar-mill and the other goods
we had been obliged to leave behind at Tette. On hearing that there was
a possibility of a powerful steamer ascending as far as Sinamane's, but
never above the Grand Victoria Falls, he asked, with charming simplicity,
if a cannon could not blow away the Falls, so as to allow the vessel to
come up to Sesheke.
To save the tribe from breaking up, by the continual loss of real
Makololo, it ought at once to remove to the healthy Batoka highlands,
near the Kafue. Fully aware of this, Sekeletu remarked that all his
people, save two, were convinced that, if they remained in the lowlands,
a few years would suffice to cut off all the real Makololo; they came
originally from the healthy South, near the confluence of the Likwa and
Namagari, where fever is almost unknown, and its ravages had been as
frightful among them here, as amongst Europeans on the Coast. Sebituane's
sister described its first appearance among the tribe, after their
settling in the Barotse Valley on the Zambesi. Many of them were seized
with a shivering sickness, as if from excessive cold; they had never seen
the like before. They made great fires, and laid the shivering wretches
down before them; but, pile on wood as they might, they could not raise
heat enough to drive the cold out of the bodies of the sufferers, and
they shivered on till they died. But, though all preferred the
highlands, they were afraid to go there, lest the Matebele should come
and rob them of their much-loved cattle. Sebituane, with all his
veterans, could not withstand that enemy; and how could they be resisted,
now that most of the brave warriors were dead? The young men would
break, and run away the moment they saw the terrible Matebele, being as
much afraid of them as the black conquered tribes are of the Makololo.
"But if the Doctor and his wife," said the chiefs and counsellors, "would
come and live with us, we would remove to the highlands at once, as
Moselekatse would not attack a place where the daughter of his friend,
Moffat, was living."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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