1 847-5 «•] THIRD STATION. 95 



interrupt the continuous account of these journeys, we 

 may advert here to a visit paid to him at Kolobeng, on 

 his return from the first of them, in the end of the year, 

 by Mr. Freeman of the London Missionary Society, who 

 was at that time visiting the African stations. Mr. 

 Freeman, to Livingstone's regret, was in favour of keep- 

 ing up all the Colonial stations, because the London 

 Society alone paid attention to the black population. He 

 was not much in sympathy with Livingstone. 



" Mr. Freeman," he writes confidentially to Mr. Watt, " gave us 

 no hope to expect any new field to be taken up. ' Expenditure to he 

 reduced in Africa' was the word, when I proposed the new region 

 beyond us, and there is nobody willing to go except Mr. Moffat and 

 myself. Six hundred miles additional land-carriage, mosquitos in 

 myriads, sparrows by the million, an epidemic frequently fatal, don't 

 look well in a picture. I am 270 miles from Kuruman ; land-carriage for 

 all that we use makes a fearful inroad into the £100 of salary, and then 

 600 miles beyond this makes one think unutterable things, for nobody 

 likes to call for more salary. I think the Indian salary ought to be 

 given to those who go into the tropics. I have a very strong desire 

 to go and reduce the new language to writing, but I cannot perform 

 impossibilities. I don't think it quite fair for the Churches to expect 

 their messenger to live, as if he were the Prodigal Son, on the husks 

 that the swine do eat, but I should be ashamed to say so to any one 

 but yourself." 



" I cannot perform impossibilities," said Livingstone ; 

 but few men could come so near doing it. His activity 

 of mind and body at this outskirt of civilisation was 

 wonderful. A Jack-of-all-trades, he is building houses 

 and schools, cultivating gardens, scheming in every 

 manner of way how to get water, which in the remark- 

 able drought of the season becomes scarcer and scarcer ; 

 as a missionary he is holding meetings every other night, 

 preaching on Sundays, and taking such other oppor- 

 tunities as he can find to gain the people to Christ ; as a 

 medical man he is dealing with the more difficult cases 

 of disease, those which baffle the native doctors ; as a 

 man of science he is taking observations, collecting speci- 

 mens, thinking out geographical, geological, meteoro- 



