Chap. IX. PRESENTS AND TRADING. 120 



where gold is unknown, if a button and sovereign were left to 

 their choice, they would prefer the former on account of its 

 iiaving an eye. 



As I had declined to specify any article to Sekeletu which 

 I wished to possess, except a canoe to take me up the river, 

 he brought ten fine elephants' tusks. He would take no 

 denial, and I afterwards gave them to some of his subjects 

 to sell on their own account. During the eleven years I had 

 been in the country, though we always made presents to the 

 chiefs whom we visited, I invariably refused to take donations 

 of ivory in return, from an idea that a religious instructor 

 degraded himself by accepting gifts from those whose spiritual 

 welfare he professed to seek. Though I received some tasks 

 from Sebituane in 1851, it was only to purchase by the pro- 

 ceeds a variety of useful articles which I carried to his son. 

 I had often handsome offers, but I always advised that the 

 ivory should be sold to dealers, who w T ould be sure to follow 

 in my footsteps; and when my friends among the natives 

 had become rich by barter, they might remember me or my 

 children. At the time Lake Ngami was discovered I gave 

 permission to a trader to form part of our company. The 

 return I got for preferring his interest to my own was an 

 assertion in one of the Cape papers that he " was the true 

 discoverer of the lake ! " 



Barter is the only means by w r hich a missionary in the 

 interior can pay his way, as money has no value. In all 

 the journeys I had previously undertaken for wider diffusion 

 of the gospel, the extra expenses were defrayed from my 

 salary of 1007. per annum. This is sufficient to enable a 

 missionary to live in the interior of South Africa, if he has 

 a garden which produces corn and vegetables. Without this 

 adjunct the allowance is barely sufficient for the poorest fare 

 and plainest apparel, unless the missionary spends six or 

 eight months in journeys to the colony, for the sake of 

 getting goods at a lower price than they can be had from 

 itinerant traders. This we never felt ourselves justified in 

 doing ; and when to our ordinary expenses were added the cost 

 incurred in travelling, the wants of an increasing family, and 

 liberal gifts to chiefs, it was difficult, with the utmost frugality, 

 to make both ends meet. As, however, my opinion ol the 



