SEKELETU'S PRESENT. 101 



should prefer to see him. trading with Fleming, a man oi' 

 color from the West Indies, who had come for the purpose. 

 I had, during the eleven years of my previous course, 

 invariably abstained from taking presents of ivory, from an 

 idea that a religious instructor degraded himself by accept- 

 ing gifts from those whose spiritual welfare he professed 

 to seek. My precedence of all traders in the line of dis- 

 covery put me often in the way of very handsome offers; 

 but I always advised the donors to sell their ivory to 

 traders, who would be sure to follow, and when at some 

 future time they had become rich by barter they might 

 remember me or my children. When Lake Ngami was 

 discovered, 1 might have refused permission to a trader 

 who accompanied us; but when he applied for leave to 

 form part of our company, knowing that Mr. Oswell 

 would no more trade than myself, and that the people of 

 the lake would be disappointed if they could not dispose 

 of their ivory, I willingly granted a sanction, without 

 which his people would not at that time have ventured so 

 far. This was surely preferring the interest of another to 

 my own. The return I got for this was a notice in one 

 of the Cape papers that this " man was the true discoverer 

 of the lake I" 



The conclusion I had come to was that it is quite lawful, 

 though perhaps not expedient, for missionaries to trade; 

 but barter is the only means by which a missionary in the 

 interior can pay his way, as money has no value. In all 

 the journeys I had previously undertaken for wider diffu- 

 sion of the gospel, the extra expenses wen; defrayed from 

 my salary of £100 per annum. This sum is sufficient to 

 enable a missionary to live in the interior of South Africa, 

 supposing he has a garden capable of yielding corn and 

 vegetables; but should he not, and still consider that six 

 or eight months cannot lawfully be spent simply in getting 

 goods at a lower price than they can be had from itinerant 

 traders, the sum mentioned is barely sufficient for the 

 poorest fare and plainest apparel. As we never felt our- 



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