Page:The Past, Present and Future Trade of the Cape Colonies with Central Africa.pdf/20

in his book; but he is a Tartuffe. I perceived this when I made his acquaintance on the first occasion, and when I saw him I was impressed with the idea that he was a man whom we could not depend on. But when he talks to you, please do not believe one word in ten. I will mention only one circumstance when I saw him. When I was introduced to him he paid me a very nice compliment, and I was very astonished, I had never heard anything similar of a chief before; but when at the same moment he paid me the compliment he was talking to his officer, and with his right eye he was making fun of me. So I was careful about him. That man lives in a villa similar to one of our villas here. If a traveller came and saw him, he invites him to tea, and he has a silver service in which he takes tea. When he invited me to take tea with him, the King sat at the head of the table, to his left sat his Queen, and next to him two missionaries (Rev. Price and Rev. Williams), and I was third on the right. He was talking to these two gentlemen, who were translating to him, and he asked me about my home. I told him I was an Austrian, and he would not believe this; natives only know two nations, the Dutch and English. If I said I was an Austrian that could not be. If I had said a Frenchman or Italian—no, he said, I must be an Englishman or a Dutchman. I remember when a boy of thirteen, reading a story of him in Livingstone’s book, which I told him I had done, and added that I never thought when reading the story of him that I should ever have the pleasure of meeting him; and I observed that the Queen did not find a great interest in our talk, for she was a little dozing. At the moment when I told him her Majesty came so deep down with her head that she nearly touched her cup, and the King answered me at once and raised his eyes towards the ceiling, and said, “The ways of Providence are wonderful,”—and at the same moment he gave the Queen to understand below the table with his foot that it was not good breeding to sleep in the presence of strangers; but he did it in such a gentle manner that she nearly fell down on the table. He did that when he told me “The ways of Providence are wonderful.” (Laughter.) So that during the war between Khama and the present ruler—who, I may mention, is one of the best rulers we find in the interior—when he was at war with his cruel father, Sekhomo, Sechele sent 2,000 of his warriors against Khama to Sekhomo, and when engaged in fight with him sent messengers to Khama. He can send a good many warriors also to him, if he would give him many head of cattle, and ivory and feathers. My idea is that, as we have to deal with peaceful natives who were peaceful, only a few of them became high spirited