10 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



effected until many Missionaries were driven from their settlements by the 

 Boers, who very naturally objected to their teaching the natives that all men 

 were equal in the sight of God. As we shall see further on, Dr. Livingstone 

 suffered at their hands; but as he, in addition to being a missionary, was also 

 a great explorer and discoverer of hitherto untrodden regions in the far 

 interior, his denunciations had an effect in high quarters which those of 

 a mere preacher of the Gospel to the heathen would not have had, and the 

 local Government put a stop to the detestable practice. As in every other 

 quarter of Africa where it exists, slavery was at the root of all the wars and 

 bloodshed which made it so difficult and dangerous for white men, whatever 

 their object, to penetrate into the interior. 



Previous to Dr. Livingstone's arrival in Africa, Dr. Moffat and a devoted 

 band of labourers had been working zealously and successfully among the 

 Hottentot, Bushmen, and Bechuana tribes ; and the former had made frequent 

 journeys to the north, and had reached points farther to the northward than 

 any of his predecessors and contemporaries. After Livingstone, he is the 

 most notable figure in African Missionary enterprise, and has spent upwards 

 of fifty years of his life in evangelistic labours in South Africa ; displaying a 

 courage and a devotedness truly apostolic. "When in his prime he was a man 

 of commanding exterior. Upwards of six feet in height, possessed of physical 

 power and endurance above the ordinary, and having a singular faculty of 

 adapting himself to circumstances whatever their nature, he gained a great 

 ascendancy over the Chiefs of the interior and their followers. The noble 

 old man, although over eighty years of age, is still alive, and was the most 

 notable figure among those who stood by the grave of his great son-in-law in 

 Westminster Abbey. 



Mr. Gordon Cumming, the great lion hunter, on visiting Kuruman, thus 

 alludes to him : — 



" I was here kindly and hospitably entertained by Mr. Moffat and Mr. 

 Hamilton, both missionaries of the London Society, and also by Mr. Hume, 

 an old trader, long resident at Kuruman. The gardens at Kuruman are 

 extremely fertile. Besides corn and vegetables, they contain a great variety 

 of fruits, amongst which were vines, peach-trees, nectarines, apple, orange, 

 and lemon trees, all of which in their seasons bear a profusion of the most 

 delicious fruit. These gardens are irrigated with a most liberal supply of 

 water from a powerful fountain which gushes forth, at once forming 

 a little river, from a subterraneous cave, which has several low, narrow 

 mouths, but within is lofty and extensive. Mr. Moffat kindly showed 

 me through his printing establishment, church, and school-rooms, which 

 were lofty and well built, and altogether on a scale which would not have 

 disgraced one of the towns of the more enlightened colony. It was Mr. 

 Moffat who reduced the Sichuana language to writing and printing; since 



