486 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 



some of the happiest years of my life in missionary labour, and 

 was favoured in witnessing a gratifying measure of success in the 

 spread of the knowledge of the gospel. The good seed was widely 

 sown, and is not lost. It will yet hear fruit, though I may not live 

 to see it. In the pursuit of my plan I tried to plant among the 

 tribes around by means of native teachers and itineracies. We 

 have heard again and again of a " preparatory work going on " in 

 India, but who ever heard of such in Africa ? A village of 600 or 

 800 may have one, or even two missionaries, with schoolmasters 

 and schoolmistresses, and the nearest population, fifty or one 

 hundred miles off, cannot feel their influence. Believers will not, 

 in many cases, go beyond the circle of their own friends and 

 acquaintances* 



I was happy in having two worthy men of colour to aid me in 

 diffusing a knowledge of Christ among the Eastern tribes, but the 

 Boers forbade us to preach unto the Gentiles that they might be 

 saved. My attention was turned to Sebituane by Sechele at the 

 very time this happened, but I had no intention of leaving the 

 Bakwains. Droughts succeeded, and these, with perpetual threats 

 and annoyances from the Boers, so completely distracted the 

 mind of the tribe that our operations were almost suspended. It 

 is well known that food for the mind has but little savour for 

 starving stomachs. The famine, and the unmistakable deter- 

 mination of the Boers to enslave my people, at last made me look 

 to the north seriously. There was no precipitancy. Letters went 

 to and from India respecting my project before resolving to leave, 

 and I went at last, after being obliged to send my family to 

 Kuruman in order to be out of the way of a threatened attack of 

 the Boers. When we reached Lake 'Ngami, about which so much 

 has been said, I immediately asked for guides to take me to 

 Sebituane, because to form a settlement in which the gospel might 

 be planted was the great object for which I had come. Guides 

 were refused, and the Bayeiye were prevented from ferrying me 

 across the Zouga. I made a raft, but after working in the water 

 for hours it would not carry me. (I have always been thankful, 

 since I knew how alligators abound there, that I was not then 

 killed by one.) Next year affairs were not improved at Kolobeng, 

 and while attempting the north again fever drove us back. In 

 both that and the following year I took my family with me in 

 order to obviate the loss of time which returning for them would 



