The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His FamilyBlaikie, William Garden
Religion
The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His Family
Blaikie, William Garden
Livingstone, David, 1813-1873
"All that is needed is religious and mercantile
establishments to begin a better system and promote peaceful
intercourse. Here we are among a people who go stark naked
with no more sense of shame than we have with our clothes on.
The women have more sense and go decently. You see great
he-animals all about your camp carrying their indispensable
tobacco-pipes and iron tongs to lift fire with, but the idea
of a fig-leaf has never entered the mind. They cultivate
largely have had enormous crops of grain, work well in iron,
and show taste in their dwellings, stools, baskets, and
musical instruments. They are very hospitable, too, and
appreciate our motives; but shame has been unaccountably left
out of the question. They can give no reason for it except
that all their ancestors went exactly as they do. Can you
explain why Adam's first feeling has no trace of existence in
his offspring?"
When the party reached the outskirts of Sekelétu's territory the news
they heard was not encouraging. Some of the men heard that in their
absence some of their wives had been variously disposed of. One had been
killed for witchcraft, another had married again, while Masakasa was
told that two years ago a kind of wild Irish wake had been celebrated in
honor of his memory; the news made him resolve, when he presented
himself among them, to declare himself an inhabitant from another world!
One poor fellow's wail of anguish for his wife was most distressing
to hear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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