PREFATORY LETTER. ix 



the Gospel to South Africa,) became his comforter and helper 

 in these good offices of love and ministerial duty. At length 

 a little vineyard was planted by him at Kolobeng and in the 

 country near the south-eastern skirts of the great Kalahari 

 desert, which promised to spread its fruit and branches far 

 and wide in South Africa. 



Nor did he, during these years, forget the studies of his 

 earlier life, or shut his eyes to that goodly book of nature 

 which never ceased to charm him. His pages teem with 

 information and good suggestions; to be worked out, we trust, 

 and turned to profit, by those who may hereafter follow in 

 his steps. In reading some of his plain unadorned descrip- 

 tions, which are almost sublime from their simple truthful- 

 ness, we might fancy that we were wandering with him 

 through a wild untamed world of an antique fashion (like 

 that sometimes painted by geologists) before man had been 

 placed upon it, and begun his works of change. 



In 1849, he for the first time crossed a part of the great 

 Kalahari desert, and visited the lake Ngami. 



His journal is here crowded with matters of deep interest 

 to a moralist or a naturalist — to one who can study human 

 nature in its lowest degradation, yet even there can find mar- 

 vellous traces of ingenuity and of aspirations after a higher and 

 better life; — or to another who rejoices to view the face of the 

 natural world in its extremes of wild luxuriance and sterility ; 

 yet in both extremes capable of supporting millions of rational 

 beings when man has driven off the ponderous monsters that 

 are now stalking on the surface, and obeyed the command of 

 his Maker in subduing it. 



The next year (1850) he made another northern excursion 

 and reached the great river Zambesi. It was then that he 

 became personally known to Sebituane, the conqueror and 

 Chief of all the neighbouring country. He was everywhere 

 received with fresh confidence and kindness. The report of 

 his labours of love had gone before him, and no one was 



