1 854-5 6.] FROM LOANDA TO QUILIMANE. 195 



first in the eastern direction, which the course of the great Leeambye 

 seemed to invite, I should have come among the belligerents near 

 Tette when the war was raging at its height, instead of, as it happened, 

 when all was over. And again, when enabled to reach Loanda, the 

 resolution to do my duty by going back to Linyanti probably saved 

 me from the fate of my papers in the ' Forerunner.' And then, last 

 of all, this new country is partially opened to the sympathies of 

 Christendom, and I find that Sechele himself has, though unbidden by 

 man, been teaching his own people. In fact, he has been doing all that 

 I was prevented from doing, and I have been employed in exploring — 

 a work I had no previous intention of performing. I think that I see 

 the operation of the Unseen Hand in all this, and I humbly hope that 

 it will still guide me to do good in my day and generation in Africa." 



In looking forward to the work to which Providence 

 seemed to be calling him, a communication received at 

 Quilimane disturbed him not a little. It was from the 

 London Missionary Society. It informed him that the 

 Directors were restricted in their power of aiding plans 

 connected only remotely with the spread of the gospel, 

 and that even though certain obstacles (from tsetse, etc.) 

 should prove surmountable, " the financial circumstances 

 of the Society are not such as to afford any ground of 

 hope that it would be in a position within any definite 

 period to undertake untried any remote and difficult 

 fields of labour." Dr. Livingstone very naturally under- 

 stood this as a declinature of his proposals. Writing on 

 the subject to Rev. William Thompson, the Society's 

 agent at Cape Town, he said : — 



" I had imagined in my simplicity that both my preaching, conver- 

 sation, and travel were as nearly connected with the spread of the 

 gospel as the Boers would allow them to be. A plan of opening up a 

 path from either the east or west coast for the teeming population of 

 the interior was submitted to the judgment of the Directors, and 

 received their formal approbation. 



" I have been seven times in peril of my life from savage men while 

 laboriously and without swerving pursuing that plan, and never 

 doubting that I was in the path of duty. 



" Indeed, so clearly did I perceive that I was performing good 

 service to the cause of Christ, that I wrote to my brother that I would 

 perish rather than fail in my enterprise. I shall not boast of what I 

 have done, but the wonderful mercy I have received will constrain me 

 to follow out the work in spite of the veto of the Board. 



