328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



advisable that he should abandon his original design, and look else- 

 where for a sphere of enterprise. It was soon offered. Mr. Moffat, 

 another of the London Society's missionaries, was laboring successfully 

 in Southern Africa among the tribe of the Bechuana. Livingstone 

 heard of this ; and, as both the scene and the work were attractive, he 

 resolved to join him. 



Accordingly in 1S40, with the full approval of his Society, he left 

 England for Kuruman, Mr. Moffat's station. There he spent the first 

 three years. In 1843 he moved to Mabotsa, gome three hundred miles 

 to the northeast, where, in the effort to help his Bakatta/>ro^s, the 

 memorable encounter with the lion occurred, which so nearly proved 

 fatal to him. In 1844 he married the veteran missionary's daughter. 

 Having made a friend of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, he ultimately 

 removed to his country, and built a station with his own hands, near a 

 small stream called the Kolobeng. 



Some years pass in hard and successful work, and then Livingstone 

 renounces his life as a stationary teacher ; and, though never entirely 

 relinquishing his missionary chai*acter, assumes that of an explorer, by 

 which he is best known. The change came about in this way : 



To the southeast of Kolobeng lay the Kashan Mountains, to which 

 a number of Dutch Boers, fugitives from English law, had migrated, 

 and formed a small republic. Having appropriated their territory, 

 they had compelled the natives themselves to live, if not in absolute 

 slavery, yet under a system of unpaid labor very closely allied to it. 

 Livingstone, with his missionary views, was of course looked upon as 

 an interloper, and hated in a corresponding degree. To add to the 

 grievance of the settlement at Kolobeng, his subsequent discovery of 

 Lake Ngami had encouraged traders to advance from the south, who, 

 by giving the natives ideas about commercial matters they never had 

 before, tended to raise disaffection toward themselves. The result was 

 a determination on the part of the Boers to make a raid on the Bak- 

 wains, which a report that the latter were well armed with guns and 

 cannon (an amusing myth about a black pot of Livingstone's) alone 

 prevented. They then tried to get the governor at the Cape, Sir G-. 

 Cathcart, to interfere, and negotiations which followed ended in a 

 treaty far more favorable to the natives than to themselves. In spite 

 of this, however, an attack was made by the Boers on Sechele and the 

 Bakwains in 1852, in which Livingstone's house was burnt down, and 

 all his property destroyed, while he was absent on a journey to the 

 Cape. 



This opposition was very provoking to Livingstone ; and the deter- 

 mination to carry out his plans for bettering the condition of the 

 natives set him at work forthwith to open up the country northward. 

 In company with two English gentlemen, Mr. Oswell and Major Var- 

 don, the great Kalahari Desert was crossed, and Lake Ngami dis- 

 covered, in August, 1849. Livingstone's opinion of this country de- 



