"Of course it may be said that it was well known that I was connected
with Cecil Rhodes and that the photographer therefore would have no
difficulty in faking a portrait. I admit all that, and therefore I would
not have introduced this if it had stood alone, as any evidence showing
that it was a _bona fide_ photograph of an invisible being. But it does
not stand alone, and I have almost every reason to believe in the almost
stupid honesty, if I may use such a phrase, of the photographer. I am
naturally much interested in these latest portraits of the African
Colossus. They are, at any rate, entirely new, no such portraits, to the
best of my knowledge--and I have made a collection of all I can lay my
hands on--exactly resembling those portraits which I obtained at Mr.
B--'s studio.
"I will conclude the account of my experiments by telling how I secured
a portrait under circumstances which preclude any possibility of fake or
fraud. One day when I entered the studio, Mr. B-- said to me, 'There is
a man come with you who has been here before; he came here some days ago
when I was by myself; he looked very wild, and he had a gun in his hand,
and I did not like the look of him. I don't like guns, so I asked him to
go away, for I was frightened of the gun, and he went. But now he has
come with you, and he has not got his gun any more, so we will let him
stop.' I was rather amused at the old man's story and said, 'Well, see
if you can photograph him.' 'I don't know as I can,' he said, 'I never
know what I can get,'--which is quite true, for often the photographs
which he says he sees clairvoyantly do not come out on the plate. While
he was photographing me, I said to him, 'If you can tell this man to go
away, you can ask him his name.' 'Yes,' said he. 'Will you do so?' I
said. 'Yes,' he said. After seeming to ask the question mentally, he
said, 'He says his name is Piet Botha.' 'Piet Botha,' I said, 'I know no
such name. There are Louis and Philip, and Chris Botha. I have never
heard of Piet; still they are a numerous family and there are plenty of
Bothas in South Africa, and it will be interesting to ask General Botha,
when he arrives, whether he knows of any Piet Botha.' When the negative
was developed, sure enough there appeared behind me a photograph of a
stalwart bearded person, who might have been a Boer or a Russian moujik,
but who was certainly unknown to me. I had never seen a portrait of any
one which bore any resemblance to the photograph.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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