It Seems To Them Supernatural
That We See In A Book Things Taking Place, Or Having Occurred At A Distance.
No Amount Of Explanation Conveys The Idea Unless They Learn To Read.
Machinery Is Equally Inexplicable, And Money Nearly As Much So
Until They See It In Actual Use.
They are familiar with barter alone;
and in the centre of the country, where gold is totally unknown,
if a button and sovereign were left to their choice,
they would prefer the former on account of its having an eye.
In beginning to learn, Motibe seemed to himself in the position of the doctor,
who was obliged to drink his potion before the patient, to show that
it contained nothing detrimental; after he had mastered the alphabet,
and reported the thing so far safe, Sekeletu and his young companions
came forward to try for themselves. He must have resolved
to watch the effects of the book against his views on polygamy,
and abstain whenever he perceived any tendency, in reading it,
toward enforcing him to put his wives away. A number of men
learned the alphabet in a short time and were set to teach others,
but before much progress could be made I was on my way to Loanda.
As I had declined to name any thing as a present from Sekeletu,
except a canoe to take me up the river, he brought ten fine elephants' tusks
and laid them down beside my wagon. He would take no denial,
though I told him I should prefer to see him trading with Fleming,
a man of color from the West Indies, who had come for the purpose.
I had, during the eleven years of my previous course, invariably abstained
from taking presents of ivory, from an idea that a religious instructor
degraded himself by accepting gifts from those whose spiritual welfare
he professed to seek. My precedence of all traders in the line of discovery
put me often in the way of very handsome offers, but I always advised
the donors to sell their ivory to traders, who would be sure to follow,
and when at some future time they had become rich by barter,
they might remember me or my children. When Lake Ngami was discovered
I might have refused permission to a trader who accompanied us;
but when he applied for leave to form part of our company,
knowing that Mr. Oswell would no more trade than myself,
and that the people of the lake would be disappointed
if they could not dispose of their ivory, I willingly granted a sanction,
without which his people would not at that time have ventured so far.
This was surely preferring the interest of another to my own.
The return I got for this was a notice in one of the Cape papers
that this "man was the true discoverer of the lake!"
The conclusion I had come to was, that it is quite lawful,
though perhaps not expedient, for missionaries to trade; but barter
is the only means by which a missionary in the interior can pay his way,
as money has no value.
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