He Said He Meant To
Disown Them, And To Say, When They Come To Salute Him, "I Am Dead.
I
am not here.
I belong to another world, and should stink if I came
among you."
All the sad news we had previously heard, of the disastrous results
which followed the attempt of a party of missionaries, under the Rev.
H. Helmore, to plant the gospel at Linyanti, were here fully
confirmed. Several of the missionaries and their native attendants,
from Kuruman, had succumbed to the fever, and the survivors had
retired some weeks before our arrival. We remained the whole of the
7th beside the village of the old Batoka chief, Moshobotwane, the
stoutest man we have seen in Africa. The cause of our delay here was
a severe attack of fever in Charles Livingstone. He took a dose of
our fever pills; was better on the 8th, and marched three hours; then
on the 9th marched eight miles to the Great Falls, and spent the rest
of the day in the fatiguing exercise of sight-seeing. We were in the
very same valley as Linyanti, and this was the same fever which
treated, or rather maltreated, with only a little Dover's powder,
proved so fatal to poor Helmore; the symptoms, too, were identical
with those afterwards described by non-medical persons as those of
poison.
We gave Moshobotwane a present, and a pretty plain exposition of what
we thought of his bloody forays among his Batoka brethren. A
scolding does most good to the recipient, when put alongside some
obliging act.
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