1 88 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. ix. 



densely peopled, but in other parts the population was 

 scattered. Many of the tribes were friendly, and, for 

 reasons of their own, would welcome missionaries. The 

 Makololo, for example, furnished an inviting field. The 

 dangers he had encountered arose from the irritating 

 treatment the tribes had received from half-caste traders 

 and slave-dealers, in consequence of which they had im- 

 posed certain taxes on travellers, which, sometimes, he 

 and his brother-chartists had refused to pay. They were 

 mistaken for slave-dealers. But character was a powerful 

 educator. A body of missionaries, maintaining everywhere 

 the character of honest, truthful, kind-hearted Christian 

 gentlemen, would scatter such prejudices to the winds. 



In instituting a comparison between the direct and 

 indirect results of missions, between conversion-work 

 and the diffusion of better principles, he emphatically 

 assigns the preference to the latter. Not that he under- 

 valued the conversion of the most abject creature that 

 breathed. To the man individually his conversion was 

 of overwhelming consequence, but with relation to the 

 final harvest, it was more important to sow the seed 

 broadcast over a wide field than to reap a few heads of 

 grain on a single spot. Concentration was not the true 

 principle of missions. The Society itself had felt this, 

 in sending Morrison and Milne to be lost among the three 

 hundred millions of China ; and the Church of England, 

 in looking to the Antipodes, to Patagonia, to East Africa, 

 with the full knowledge that charity began at home. 

 Time was more essential than concentration. Ultimately 

 there would be more conversions, if only the seed were 

 now more widely spread. 



He concludes by pointing out the difference between 

 mere worldly enterprises and missionary undertakings 

 for the good " of the world. The world thought their 

 .mission schemes fanatical ; the friends of missions, on the 

 other hand, could welcome the commercial enterprises of 



