All The Women Had Been Sent Out Of The Way, And The Men
Were Evidently Prepared To Resist Aggression.
At the village of a
chief named Tingane, at least five hundred natives collected and
ordered us to stop.
Dr. Livingstone went ashore; and on his
explaining that we were English and had come neither to take slaves
nor to fight, but only to open a path by which our countrymen might
follow to purchase cotton, or whatever else they might have to sell,
except slaves, Tingane became at once quite friendly. The presence
of the steamer, which showed that they had an entirely new people to
deal with, probably contributed to this result; for Tingane was
notorious for being the barrier to all intercourse between the
Portuguese black traders and the natives further inland; none were
allowed to pass him either way. He was an elderly, well-made man,
grey-headed, and over six feet high. Though somewhat excited by our
presence, he readily complied with the request to call his people
together, in order that all might know what our objects were.
In commencing intercourse with any people we almost always referred
to the English detestation of slavery. Most of them already possess
some information respecting the efforts made by the English at sea to
suppress the slave-trade; and our work being to induce them to raise
and sell cotton, instead of capturing and selling their fellow-men,
our errand appears quite natural; and as they all have clear ideas of
their own self-interest, and are keen traders, the reasonableness of
the proposal is at once admitted; and as a belief in a Supreme Being,
the Maker and Ruler of all things, and in the continued existence of
departed spirits, is universal, it becomes quite appropriate to
explain that we possess a Book containing a Revelation of the will of
Him to whom in their natural state they recognise no relationship.
The fact that His Son appeared among men, and left His words in His
Book, always awakens attention; but the great difficulty is to make
them feel that they have any relationship to Him, and that He feels
any interest in them.
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