r and his bodyguard would pull up behind
him.

Over eighty years old, grey and wrinkled, he would spring from his
horse, without help, to greet you--still Khama, the Antelope. Old
as he is, he is as alert as ever. He heard that a great all Africa
aeroplane route was planned after the Great War. At once he offered
to make a great aerodrome, and the day at last came when
Khama--eighty-five years old--who had seen Livingstone, the first
white man to visit his tribe--stood watching the first aeroplane come
bringing a young officer from the clouds.

He stands there, the splendid chief of the Bamangwato--"steel-true,
blade-straight." He is the Black Prince of Africa--who has indeed won
his spurs against the enemies of his people.

And if you were to ask him the secret of the power by which he has
done these things, Khama the silent, who is not used to boasting,
would no doubt lead you at dawn to the _Kgotla_ before his huts. There
at every sunrise he gathers his people together for their morning
prayers at the feet of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Captain and King of our Great Crusade for the saving of Africa.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 46: In 1875.]

[Footnote 47: The chiefs open-air enclosure for official meetings.]

[Footnote 48: These are Khama's own words taken down at the time by
Hepburn.]

CHAPTER XVII

THE KNIGHT OF THE SLAVE GIRLS

_George Grenfell_

(Dates, b. 1849, d. 1906)

_The Building of the Steamship_

When David Livingstone lay dying in his hastily-built hut, in the
heart of Africa, with his black companions Susi and Chumah attending
him, almost his last words were, "How far away is the Luapula?"

He knew that the river to which the Africans gave that name was only
a short distance away and that it flowed northward. He thought that it
might be the upper reaches of the Nile, which had been sought by men
through thousands of years, but which none had ever explored.

Livingstone died in that hut (1873) and never knew what Stanley,
following in his footsteps, discovered later (1876-7), viz., that the
Luapula was really the upper stretch of the Congo, the second largest
river in the world (3000 miles long), flowing into the Atlantic. The
basin of the Congo would cover the whole of Europe from the Black Sea
to the English Channel.

In the year when Livingstone died, and before Stanley started to
explore the Congo, a young man, who had been thrilled by reading the
travels of Liv