Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

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THINKING BLACK
Chona. As Lord Paramount, lie was the owner of broad
lands, and what could you expect? Still, that is just
the sore point, for we had lofty hopes that the Chona
— "Destroyer," the translation—in his peaceful death
would create a clean and bloodless precedent for the
young generation. Now it ekes out that one of his
strongest reasons for not becoming a Christian wag his
fear that he would lose the divine honours of a vermilion
sunset. What a poor King Jesus Christ was (he argued)
to die in darkness as a felon ! How, then, did this Chona
holocaust eventuate ? After all, it is only another proof
that the African at home is lord of his own soil, and
can outwit a white man any day. Even your Sherlock
Holmes would soon find mere fertility of brain handi-
capped by the fact that he was only one against a million.
For, when this great Chona fell ominously sick, I saw to
it that several lynx-eyed negroes were hanging around,
their plea for loitering being the medicine I had sent.
Nevertheless, long ago the old councillors, who sniffed
treason in the very appearance of these Mission negroes,
iiave plotted their being outwitted—and remember, for
Keynard to outwit Reynard, the subtlety must be a
marvel. *'As false as a bulletin," became a proverb
in the days of Napoleon ; so these old " death-doctors
copied France, and resolved to create a strong diversion
to the North. Thus at daybreak the news (as first bulletin
for the day) was on everybody's lips that the sick King
had been removed by night to the North—the heat, the
marsh, the billions of mosquitoes, the ostensible plea for