viii PREFATORY LETTER. 



nature. Some of them might have seen and learnt to fear, 

 and perhaps to hate, the civilized men called Christian. For 

 it is certain that men, called Christian, living on the frontier 

 lines of savage lands (and the remark applies to no line more than 

 that which forms the northern skirt of the Cape Colonies), while 

 they perhaps thank God that they are not as the poor Savage 

 who is before them, are seldom known to hold out a hand to lift 

 him from the earth : nay, rather, are ever ready to make him 

 the enslaved minister of their base and selfish appetites. 



With such apostles, civilization and Christian truth can 

 never make one step of good progress. Nay, such men will 

 dare to tell us (and thousands have been ready to believe the 

 tale, and even good men have listened to it) that when sunk 

 below a certain level, of which they make themselves the 

 judges, no power under heaven can reclaim the Savage — that 

 he is doomed to death by the God who created him — that 

 over him the promises of the Gospel have passed without any 

 meaning — that by the laws of nature, which are the voice of 

 God, he is predestined to be torn out of the soil like a rank 

 weed, or slaughtered like a wild beast of the forest. 



Such was not the faith of Livingstone. He taught the 

 poor Africans to love him and to trust him, because he treated 

 them with confidence and love. He visited them in their 

 wants ; he healed them in their sickness ; he taught them the 

 first simple lessons of Christian truth. With the Natives who 

 had reached the years of manhood he made but slow progress. 

 Some of their Chiefs were, however, won over to the truth. 

 But while the greater number heard him with a kind of 

 torpid apathy, they learnt to honour and trust him ; and 

 they were willing that he should teach his lessons to their 

 children. With the children he made far better progress, 

 while he taught them the simple lessons of the Gospel, awak- 

 ened their affections, and trained them in the humble duties of 

 a Christian life. During this period his Wife (a daughter of 

 Mr Moffat, the oldest and greatest of all the Missionaries of 



