A more mean and selfish vice certainly
does not exist in the world. I am trying a different plan
with them. I make my presence with any of them a favor, and
when they show any impudence, I threaten to leave them, and
if they don't amend, I put my threat into execution. By a
bold, free course among them I have had not the least
difficulty in managing the most fierce. They are in one sense
fierce, and in another the greatest cowards in the world. A
kick would, I am persuaded, quell the courage of the bravest
of them. Add to this the report which many of them verily
believe, that I am a great wizard, and you will understand
how I can with ease visit any of them. Those who do not love,
fear me, and so truly in their eyes am I possessed of
supernatural power, some have not hesitated to affirm I am
capable of even raising the dead! The people of a village
visited by a French brother actually believed it. Their
belief of my powers, I suppose, accounts, too, for the fact
that I have not missed a single article either from the house
or wagon since I came among them, and this, although all my
things lay scattered about the room, while crammed with
patients."

It was unfortunate that the teacher whom Livingstone stationed with
Bubi's people was seized with a violent fever, so that he was obliged to
bring him away. As for Bubi himself, he was afterward burned to death by
an explosion of gunpowder, which one of his sorcerers was trying, by
means of burnt roots, to _un_-bewitch.

In advancing, Livingstone had occasion to pass through a part of the
great Kalahari desert, and here he met with Sekomi, a chief of the
Bamangwato, from whom also he received a most friendly reception. The
ignorance of this tribe he found to be exceedingly great:

"Their conceptions of the Deity are of the most vague and
contradictory nature, and the name of God conveys no more to
their understanding than the idea of superiority. Hence they
do not hesitate to apply the name to their chiefs. I was
every day shocked by being addressed by that title, and
though it as often furnished me with a text from which to
tell them of the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he has
sent, yet it deeply pained me, and I never felt so fully
convinced of the lamentable detoriation of our species. It is
indeed a mournful tr