My Only Source Of Fear
Is The Hippopotami, Whose Footprints I Saw On The Island.
When The Garden Was Prepared,
I cut my initials on a tree, and the date 1855.
This was the only instance in which I indulged
In this piece of vanity.
The garden stands in front, and, were there no hippopotami, I have no doubt
but this will be the parent of all the gardens which may yet be
in this new country. We then went up to Kalai again.
On passing up we had a view of the hut on the island where my goods
had lain so long in safety. It was under a group of palm-trees,
and Sekeletu informed me that, so fully persuaded were most of the Makololo
of the presence of dangerous charms in the packages, that, had I not returned
to tell them the contrary, they never would have been touched.
Some of the diviners had been so positive in their decisions on the point,
that the men who lifted a bag thought they felt a live kid in it.
The diviners always quote their predictions when they happen to tally
with the event. They declared that the whole party which went to Loanda
had perished; and as I always quoted the instances in which they failed,
many of them refused to throw the "bola" (instruments of divination)
when I was near. This was a noted instance of failure.
It would have afforded me equal if not greater pleasure
to have exposed the failure, if such it had been, of the European diviner
whose paper lay a whole year on this island, but I was obliged to confess
that he had been successful with his "bola", and could only comfort myself
with the idea that, though Sir Roderick Murchison's discourse
had lain so long within sight and sound of the magnificent falls,
I had been "cut out" by no one in their discovery.
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