Then the white man unfolded before Bakula and his companions the wonderful story of Jesus Christ, from the time He left heaven on His mission of Redemption, until He returned to heaven the Author of eternal salvation. The audience listened attentively to this delightfully strange story, and Bakula, looking up, exclaimed in surprised tones--
“Why, Jesus Christ was just like you! He left all for us, the same as you have done.”
The white man was strangely and deeply moved as he replied--
“No, Jesus Christ did not copy me, but I try day by day to imitate Him. It is for His sake, Bakula, that I forgave you, and have tried to return good for evil, love for hate, and am willing to die that you all may hear and believe in His great salvation.”
After a little more conversation they separated, Bakula and his friends returning to their huts solemnized, for a time, by what they had seen and heard; and the white man, calling a few of his lads, went, with his medicines and his message of God’s love, to spend a few hours in a neighbouring village.
Chapter XII
Native Games and Pastimes
Make-believe games--“Biti” and needle--Game with canna seeds--Hoop game--“Mbele,” or Knife game--The story of “The Four Wonders,” or a puzzle story--Conundrums--“The Adventures of the Twins.”
After the first novelty of our visit had passed away the women and girls went daily, with dull regularity, to the farms; but only those men who were obliged went to the markets for trading purposes, or to the forests for building materials for their houses. The men and lads who were able postponed, out of respect to their visitors, all those occupations that would not suffer from delay, and gave themselves to games, asking conundrums, and telling stories to entertain their visitors.
The children had their make-believe housekeeping, cooking, trading and marketing; the older ones their mimic wars, their mock hunts and their pretended palavers. The small girls had their sticks, or pieces of cassava roots, to represent dolls,[[36]] and they played with them as such, carrying them tied by old rags to their backs, or on their hips as their mothers had carried the children themselves when babies.
The small boys procured gourds, old tins, reeds and small drums, and imitated a band, and they made about as much music by their efforts as their elders discoursed from ivory trumpets and well-made drums. With bits of sticks, reeds and grass they made toy houses with mud walls; and with pieces of broken saucepans, old tins and any odds and ends they could borrow from their mothers’ houses, they furnished themselves with the necessary articles for their pretend-game of housekeeping, receiving visits from each other, and inviting one another to their make-believe feasts. The older and more active lads played at hockey, on which they expended a great amount of boisterous, if unskilful, energy; and the quieter ones were very expert in using their fingers and toes in making cat’s cradles of many and intricate designs.