CHAPTER XVI

THE BLACK PRINCE OF AFRICA

Khama

(Dates 1850—­the present day)

One day men came running into a village in South Africa to say that a strange man, whose body was covered with clothes and whose face was not black, was walking toward their homes.  He was coming from the South.

Never before had such a man been seen in their tribe.  So there was great excitement and a mighty chattering went through the round wattle of mud huts with their circular thatched roofs.

The African Chief, Sekhome—­who was the head of this Bamangwato tribe and who was also a noted witch-doctor—­started out along the southward trail to meet the white man.  By his side ran his eldest son.  He was a lithe, blithe boy; his chocolate coloured skin shone and the muscles rippled as he trotted along.  He was so swift that his name was the name of the antelope that gallops across the veldt.  Cama is what the Bamangwato call the antelope.  Khama is how we spell the boy’s name.

He gazed in wonder as he saw a sturdy man wearing clothes such as he had not seen before—­what we call coat and hat, trousers and boots.  He looked into the bronzed face of the white man and saw that his eyes and mouth were kind.  Together they walked back into the village.  Chief Sekhome found that the white man’s name was David Livingstone; and that he was a kind doctor who could make boys and men better when they were ill, with medicines out of a black japanned box.

When evening came the boy Khama saw the strange white man open another box and take out a curious thing which seemed to open yet was full of hundreds and hundreds of leaves.  Khama had never seen such a thing in his life and he could not understand why Livingstone opened it and kept looking at it for a long time, for he had never seen a book before and did not even know what letters were or what reading was.

It seemed wonderful to him when he heard that that book could speak to Livingstone without making any sound and that it told him about the One Infinite, Holy, Loving God, Who is Father of all men, black or brown or white, and Whose Son, Jesus Christ, came to teach us all to love God and to love one another.  For the book was the Bible which Livingstone all through his heroic exploring of Africa read each day.

So Livingstone passed on from the village; but this boy Khama never forgot him, and in time—­as we shall see—­other white men came and taught Khama himself to read that same book and worship that same God.

The Fight with the Lion

Meanwhile strange adventures came to the growing young Khama.  This is the story of some of them: 

The leaping flames of a hunting camp-fire threw upon the dark background of thorn trees weird shadows of the men who squatted in a circle on the ground, talking.