218 
AFEICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
the mission station, 700 miles north, established by 
Hamilton and Moffat thirty years before, and there he 
arrived on July 31, 1841. The next two years Living¬ 
stone spent in travelling about the country to the 
northwards in search of a suitable outpost for settle¬ 
ment. During that time he travelled many hundred 
miles, reached to within ten days of Lake Ngami, and 
secured the friendship and good will of people and chiefs, 
including Sekome and Sechele. Throughout his career 
in Africa his frank and genial way of dealing with the 
natives, the method of the “ true gentleman ” as he 
afterwards defined it, proved of far more avail than if 
he had been backed by a host of armed followers. As 
the result of his pioneering, he selected the valley of 
Mabotsa, on one of the sources of the Limpopo river, 
200 miles north-east of Kuruman, as his first station, 
with the distinct intention of staying only a few years 
and then moving on to open up fresh ground. With 
a brother missionary, Livingstone arrived at Mabotsa 
m August, 1843. The people among whom Living¬ 
stone fixed his first station were the Bakhotla tribe of 
the Becliuanas. It was shortly after his settlement 
here that he was attacked by a lion, which crushed his 
left arm, and nearly put an end to his career. The 
arm was imperfectly set, and it was a source of trouble 
to him at times throughout his life, and was the means 
of identifying his body after his death. To a house 
mainly built by himself at Mabotsa, Livingstone in 
1844, brought home his wife, Mary Moffat, the daughter 
of Moffat of Kuruman. Here he laboured till 1846, 
doing his best to train native agents, teaching the 
people the arts of civilisation, commending his religion 
more by example than by precept, though he did not 
neglect the common means of teaching Christianity. A 
misunderstanding with his fellow missionary induced 
Livingstone in 1846 to remove to Chonuane, forty miles 
further north, the chief place of the Bakwain tribe 
under Sechele. In 1847 he again removed to Kolobeng, 
about forty miles westward, the whole tribe following 
their missionary. Shortly after his removal to Kolo- 
