Religion & morality > David Livingstone

At Loan da.
T35
cocks. Many questions did the great man ask them
of their native country, and he invited them to visit
Loanda, as often as they pleased;—“Loanda, that
.vonderful place with stone houses—not huts, but
mountains, with many caves in them,” as they after¬
wards said, when describing these wonders; “and
ships as big as houses, nay, towns, into which you
must climb by a rope. These are not canoes : bah!
we thought ourselves sailors. Only the white men are
sailors, that come up out of the sea, where there is no
more earth; but earth says, ‘ I am clean gone, dead,
swallowed up, and there’s nothing but water left;’ and
the ships have masts like forest trees, and white sails
like smoke, or the foam of the Great Falls ; and they
carry big guns, full of thunder and lightning, to put
down the slave-trade with. Wonderful! Wonderful/”
Everything they saw was wonderful to these simple
people. They were afraid at first to go on board the
British cruisers, lest they should be taken away as
slaves, or eaten, as they had been told on the way they
would be if they ventured into Loanda. But Living¬
stone re assured them by telling them that the sailors
were his countrymen. So they went, and soon were
on very friendly terms with the Jack Tars, who slapped
them on the back, patted their woolly locks, called
them “ hearties;” gave them junk and biscuits, tobacco
and grog, and got up no end of fun for their amuse¬
ment. So they called the deck the kotla, and made
themselves quite at home. During their stay at
Loanda, they were not idle altogether; they cut fire¬
wood in the outskirts, and sold it in the town, and