This Is The Only Foundation
For The Common Belief That When The Lion Has Once Tasted Human Flesh
He Will Eat Nothing Else.
A "man-eater" is always an old lion,
who takes to cannibalism to avoid starvation.
When he lives
far from human habitations, and so can not get goats or children,
an old lion is often reduced to such straits as to be obliged
to live upon mice, and such small deer.
Mr. Livingstone's strictly missionary life among the Bakwains
lasted eight or nine years. The family arose early,
and, after prayers and breakfast, went to the school-room,
where men, women, and children were assembled. School was over at eleven,
when the husband set about his work as gardener, smith, or carpenter,
while his wife busied herself with domestic matters -
baking bread, a hollow in a deserted ant-hill serving for an oven;
churning butter in an earthen jar; running candles; making soap from ashes
containing so little alkaline matter that the ley had to be kept boiling
for a month or six weeks before it was strong enough for use. The wife was
maid-of-all-work in doors, while the husband was Jack-at-all-trades outside.
Three several times the tribe removed their place of residence,
and he was so many times compelled to build for himself a house,
every stick and brick of which was put in place by his own hands.
The heat of the day past, and dinner over, the wife betook herself
to the infant and sewing schools, while the husband walked down to the village
to talk with the natives. Three nights in the week, after the cows
had been milked, public meetings were held for instruction
in religious and secular matters. All these multifarious duties
were diversified by attendance upon the sick, and in various ways
aiding the poor and wretched. Being in so many ways helpful to them,
and having, besides, shown from the first that he could knock them up
at hard work or traveling, we can not wonder that Livingstone was popular
among the Bakwains, though conversions seem to have been of the rarest.
Indeed, we are not sure but Sechele's was the only case.
A great drought set in the very first year of his residence among them,
which increased year by year. The river ran dry; the canals which
he had induced them to dig for the purpose of irrigating their gardens
were useless; the fish died in such numbers that the congregated
hyenas of the country were unable to devour the putrid masses.
The rain-makers tried their spells in vain. The clouds sometimes gathered
promisingly overhead, but only to roll away without discharging a drop
upon the scorched plains. The people began to suspect some connection between
the new religion and the drought. "We like you," they said, "but we wish
you would give up this everlasting preaching and praying. You see that
we never get any rain, while the tribes who never pray have an abundance."
Livingstone could not deny the fact, and he was sometimes disposed
to attribute it to the malevolence of the "Prince of the Power of the Air",
eager to frustrate the good work.
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