26 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



with. Africaner bore a prominent part, and on which he could not reflect with- 

 out a sigh of sorrow. 



" Among the remarkable interpositions of Divine Providence in saving 

 his life from destruction, he more than once repeated the following, with much 

 emphasis. It happened when he was engaged in a desperate conflict with 

 Titus Africaner, from whose lips I heard the same tale. The two had been 

 engaged for hours in mutual strife, taking and retaking a herd of cattle. By 

 means of the large drove and bushes, each had managed to conceal himself. 

 Suddenly a passage opening in the troop, which exposed the enraged com- 

 batants to each other's view, their rifles were instantly levelled. The moment 

 they touched the triggers, a cow darted in between, and the two balls lodged 

 in the centre of the animal, which fell dead on the spot. But for this inter- 

 position, both would, in all probability, have fallen, as they were most expert 

 marksmen. Titus, a man who could take his gun in the dead of night, enter 

 an immense deep pool in the Orange River, swim to the centre, take his seat 

 on a rock just above the surface of the water, and wait the approach of a hip- 

 popotamus, which he would shoot just as it opened its monstrous jaws to seize 

 him — a man who would deliberately smile the moment he laid the lion dead 

 at his feet — this man who appeared incapable of fear, and reckless of dan- 

 ger, could not help acknowledging being most powerfully struck with his 

 escape from the ball of his antagonist, and would say to me when I referred to 

 the fact, ' Mynheer knows how to use the only hammer which makes my hard 

 heart feel.' Nicholas finished his Christian course under the pastoral care of 

 the Rev. T. L. Hodgson, Wesleyan missionary at Boochuap." 



In 1818 Dr Moffat took up his quarters at Africaner's Kraal. The 

 account he gives of the country and its then resources is not very inviting. 

 After waiting an hour or more after his arrival for a visit from the Chief, he 

 says : 



" While engaged in an interesting conversation with Africaner on the 

 state and prospect of the mission in connection with the barrier to civilization, 

 not only from the state of country and climate, but also from the want of 

 intercourse with the colony, the idea darted into my mind, that Africaner 

 would do well to accompany me to Cape Town ; and I at once made the pro- 

 posal. The good man looked at me again and again, gravely asking whether 

 I were in earnest, and seemed fain to ask if I were in my senses too ; adding, 

 with great fervour, ' I had thought you loved me, and do you advise me to go 

 to the Government, to be hung up as a specimen of public justice ? ' and put- 

 ting his hand to his head, he asked, ' Do you not know that I am an outlaw, and 

 that 1000 rix-dollars have been offered for this poor head ? ' These difficul- 

 ties I endeavoured to remove, by assuring him that the results would be most 

 satisfactory to himself as well as to the Governor of the Cape. Here Africa- 

 ner exhibited his lively faith in the gracious promises of God, by replying, ' 1 



