It was Chowbok who, if he did not originate these calumnies, did much to disseminate and gain credence for them.  He remained in England for some years, and never tired of doing what he could to disparage my father.  The cunning creature had ingratiated himself with our leading religious societies, especially with the more evangelical among them.  Whatever doubt there might be about his sincerity, there was none about his colour, and a coloured convert in those days was more than Exeter Hall could resist.  Chowbok saw that there was no room for him and for my father, and declared my poor father’s story to be almost wholly false.  It was true, he said, that he and my father had explored the head-waters of the river described in his book, but he denied that my father had gone on without him, and he named the river as one distant by many thousands of miles from the one it really was.  He said that after about a fortnight he had returned in company with my father, who by that time had become incapacitated for further travel.  At this point he would shrug his shoulders, look mysterious, and thus say “alcoholic poisoning” even more effectively than if he had uttered the words themselves.  For a man’s tongue lies often in his shoulders.

Readers of my father’s book will remember that Chowbok had given a very different version when he had returned to his employer’s station; but Time and Distance afford cover under which falsehood can often do truth to death securely.

I never understood why my father did not bring my mother forward to confirm his story.  He may have done so while I was too young to know anything about it.  But when people have made up their minds, they are impatient of further evidence; my mother, moreover, was of a very retiring disposition.  The Italians say:-

   “Chi lontano va ammogliare
   Sara ingannato, o vorra ingannare.”

“If a man goes far afield for a wife, he will be deceived—­or means deceiving.”  The proverb is as true for women as for men, and my mother was never quite happy in her new surroundings.  Wilfully deceived she assuredly was not, but she could not accustom herself to English modes of thought; indeed she never even nearly mastered our language; my father always talked with her in Erewhonian, and so did I, for as a child she had taught me to do so, and I was as fluent with her language as with my father’s.  In this respect she often told me I could pass myself off anywhere in Erewhon as a native; I shared also her personal appearance, for though not wholly unlike my father, I had taken more closely after my mother.  In mind, if I may venture to say so, I believe I was more like my father.