When we reached the Chobé River, Sebitoani was on an island thirty miles down stream, but sent his own canoe with twelve paddlers to bring us to him. It was a pleasant trip, the men going with the current about eight miles an hour. At three in the afternoon we reached our destination and landed. Presently this really great chief and man came to meet us, shy and ill at ease. We held out our hands in the accustomed way of true Britons, and I was surprised to see that his mother-wit gave him immediate insight into what was expected of him, and the friendly meaning of our salutation; though he could never have witnessed it before, he at once followed suit and placed his hand in ours as if to the manner born. I felt troubled at the evident nervousness of the famous warrior, for he had been, and still was, a mighty fighter, with very remarkable force of character. Surrounded by his tribesmen, he stood irresolute and quite overcome in the presence of two ordinary-looking Europeans. Livingstone entered at once into conversation with him, and by degrees partly reassured him; but throughout that day and the next, a sad, half-scared look never faded from his face. He had wished us to visit him, had sent an ambassage to Livingstone at Kolobeng, but the reality of our coming, with all its possibilities, dangers, and advantages seemed to flit through the man’s mind as in a vision. He killed an ox for us, and treated us right royally; he was far and away the finest Kafir I ever saw in mien and manner. He had been told that Livingstone and I occasionally wrote a letter to one another, if by chance we were separated for a day or two and wished to communicate or arrange a meeting at a certain point, and asked us if his information were true that we could make one another hear when far apart, and if we could give him an example of our power. Livingstone took a man out of even Kafir earshot, four or five hundred yards away, and then whisperingly asked him his own and his wife’s name, and writing them on a scrap of paper sent him to me. ‘Well, Ra’chobe, and how is Seboni your wife?’I asked. The chief and his headmen, who were gathered expectant round, were amazed and somewhat frightened, taking it for magic, though they soon got over it. It does not do to introduce Kafirs too suddenly to the common things of civilised life. I once lost an admiring audience by an act of this kind. A laughing circle was round me, and I was dispensing beads, brass wire, and tiny looking-glasses to ingratiate myself with a new tribe, the Macoba, when by way of amusing them I took a burning-glass from my pocket and ignited a pinch of gunpowder strewed on the waggon-box, telling them what I was going to do, and preparing them for it. With the puff, man, woman, and child, vanished; it was days before I could regain their confidence, and throughout my stay with them I was looked upon with awe as the wizard of the sun.