A “picho” was called to deliberate on the steps proposed.  In these assemblies great freedom of speech is allowed; and on this occasion one of the old diviners said, “Where is he taking you to?  This white man is throwing you away.  Your garments already smell of blood.”  It is curious to observe how much identity of character appears all over the world.  This man was a noted croaker.  He always dreamed something dreadful in every expedition, and was certain that an eclipse or comet betokened the propriety of flight.  But Sebituane formerly set his visions down to cowardice, and Sekeletu only laughed at him now.  The general voice was in my favor; so a band of twenty-seven were appointed to accompany me to the west.  These men were not hired, but sent to enable me to accomplish an object as much desired by the chief and most of his people as by me.  They were eager to obtain free and profitable trade with white men.  The prices which the Cape merchants could give, after defraying the great expenses of a long journey hither, being very small, made it scarce worth while for the natives to collect produce for that market; and the Mambari, giving only a few bits of print and baize for elephants’ tusks worth more pounds than they gave yards of cloth, had produced the belief that trade with them was throwing ivory away.  The desire of the Makololo for direct trade with the sea-coast coincided exactly with my own conviction that no permanent elevation of a people can be effected without commerce.  Neither could there be a permanent mission here, unless the missionaries should descend to the level of the Makololo, for even at Kolobeng we found that traders demanded three or four times the price of the articles we needed, and expected us to be grateful to them besides for letting us have them at all.

The three men whom I had brought from Kuruman had frequent relapses of the fever; so, finding that instead of serving me I had to wait on them, I decided that they should return to the south with Fleming as soon as he had finished his trading.  I was then entirely dependent on my twenty-seven men, whom I might name Zambesians, for there were two Makololo only, while the rest consisted of Barotse, Batoka, Bashubia, and two of the Ambonda.

The fever had caused considerable weakness in my own frame, and a strange giddiness when I looked up suddenly to any celestial object, for every thing seemed to rush to the left, and if I did not catch hold of some object, I fell heavily on the ground:  something resembling a gush of bile along the duct from the liver caused the same fit to occur at night, whenever I turned suddenly round.