“Are you speaking of Matamo?” said Mr Baylen. “Yes, he is a good servant—good at farm labour, and better at hunting; but he is not a Kaffir, nor a Hottentot either, but a Bechuana, though a very dark-skinned one. You haven’t been long enough in the country to be aware of the difference, but we old residents see it easily enough.”
“A Bechuana!” said George. “I think I know where their country is—on the other side of the Transvaal, isn’t it, three or four hundred miles away from here? What brought him into these parts?”
“Well, I brought him,” was the answer. “I brought him to Natal about five-and-thirty years ago.”
“Five-and-thirty years!” remarked Margetts. “He couldn’t have been very old then.”
“No; he was an infant,” said the farmer. “I was a young fellow of four or five-and-twenty myself, and we hadn’t been so very long settled in Natal ourselves. My mother, who had been brought up a Presbyterian, though she conformed to her husband’s form of belief, had once heard David Livingstone preach, and had been so impressed by him that she had never forgotten it. After my father’s death she fell into low spirits, and there was no one near about us who could give her any comfort. Nothing would satisfy her but that Mr Livingstone must come and see her. We tried to pacify her by telling her that Mr Livingstone, who was a great traveller, would some day come our way. You have heard of him, I suppose, gentlemen?”
“All the world has heard of him,” remarked Rivers. “I should think there is hardly an Englishman but knows his history.”
“I am not surprised to hear it. But he was a young man at the time I speak of, and was but little known. My mother, however, was bent on seeing him. She had heard that he was living at Barolong, and she was sure that he would come to visit her, and she would die if he didn’t. At last I saw there was no help for it; I must travel across the country, and find Mr Livingstone out.”
“And you went?” inquired George, as he paused.
“Yes, I went; and a terrible journey I had; and after all I couldn’t find the gentleman. He had gone up the country, and it was impossible to say, they told me, when he would come back. But that has nothing to do with Matamo; and my story was to be about him. Well, I took a good stout horse, and rode through what is now called the Orange Free State. It was almost wild in those days. Native tribes were living here and there, with whom I sometimes got a lodging; though, to be sure, their kraals were not the pleasantest places in the world, even to me. Once or twice I came across the house of a Dutchman, who had emigrated thither from the Cape.”
“I don’t expect you got much of a welcome from them,” remarked Hardy.