“They knew of it,” replied the missionary, who proceeded to describe the scenes of the last great day.

“You startle me:  these words make all my bones to shake; I have no more strength in me.  But my forefathers were living at the same time yours were; and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things?  They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going.”

Mr. Moffat had translated the Bible into the Bechuana language, which he had reduced to writing, and Sechele set himself to learn to read, with so much assiduity that he began to grow corpulent from lack of his accustomed exercise.  His great favorite was Isaiah.  “He was a fine man, that Isaiah; he knew how to speak,” he was wont to say, using the very words applied by the Glasgow Professor to the Apostle Paul.  Having become convinced of the truth of Christianity, he wished his people also to become Christians.  “I will call them together,” he said, “and with our rhinoceros-skin whips we will soon make them all believe together.”  Livingstone, mindful, perhaps, of the ill success of his worthy father in the matter of Wilberforce on “Practical Christianity”, did not favor the proposed line of argument.  He was, in fact, in no great haste to urge Sechele to make a full profession of faith by receiving the ordinance of baptism; for the chief had, in accordance with the customs of his people, taken a number of wives, of whom he must, in this case, put away all except one.  The head-wife was a greasy old jade, who was in the habit of attending church without her gown, and when her husband sent her home to make her toilet, she would pout out her thick lips in unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions, while some of the other wives were the best scholars in the school.  After a while Sechele took the matter into his own hands, sent his supernumerary wives back to their friends—­not empty-handed—­and was baptized.

Mr. Livingstone’s station was in the region since rendered famous by the hunting exploits of Gordon Cumming.  He vouches for the truth of the wonderful stories told by that redoubtable Nimrod, who visited him during each of his excursions.  He himself, indeed, had an adventure with a lion quite equal to any thing narrated by Cumming or Andersson, the result of which was one dead lion, two Bechuanas fearfully wounded, his own arm marked with eleven distinct teeth-marks, the bone crunched to splinters, and the formation of a false joint, which marred his shooting ever after.

Mr. Livingstone has a republican contempt for the “King of Beasts”.  He is nothing better than an overgrown hulking dog, not a match, in fair fight, for a buffalo.  If a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns tail and sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound.  All the talk about his majestic roar is sheer twaddle.  It takes a keen ear to distinguish the voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich.  When he is gorged he falls