Scotland/Scots > Last years of Livingstone

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THE LAST TEARS OF LIVINGSTONE.
of his wife ! or feel it to be an excruciating hardship to be
without sugar for the tea. The boys who, on reading
Captain Mayne Reid’s books, would like to be “ castaways,”
have the ring of the true missionary metal.
Speke was delighted with the central countries he
passed through as most inviting for Christian missions—
Karagwee, for instance, with the intelligent and friendly
chief Rumanyiki (spelled by him Rumanika) and Buganda
(by the Arabs called Uganda), with a teeming and polite
population under the vain, cruel, but friendly Mtesa. This
chief is the first that the Arabs have attempted to con¬
vert in Eastern Africa. Ghamees-bin-Abdullah, a very
good man lately killed here, taught Mtesa to read Suaheli
in Arab characters, and his pupil gave him about 500
young slaves and an enormous amount of ivory. Ghamees
was a Muscat Arab, and, like his class, was brave, honour¬
able and really kind-hearted. The country-born or main-
landers, being mostly of slave mothers, have, in general,
neither honour, honesty, nor zeal. As marauders they are
energetic enough, and, like the interior Dutch boers of
South Africa, very brave, where the natives have no guns.
A few slaves are operated on, taught a few prayers from
the Koran in Arabic, in order to be “ clean ” as butchers
in slaughtering animals for their masters, and are then
dressed in long calico nightgowns and tight fitting cotton
caps. This is all the conversion that the system requires,
and they become perverse liars and as unmitigated
cowards as their masters. Their dress makes them all
appear like great coarse women in their nightgowns.