[Footnote 35:  The manuscript of this sermon still exists.  The sermon is very simple, scriptural, and earnest, in the style of Bishop Ryle, or of Mr. Moody.]

It was not till the 8th of June that he left the Cape.  His wagon was loaded to double the usual weight from his good nature in taking everybody’s packages.  His oxen were lean, and he was too poor to provide better.  He reached Griqua Town on the 15th August, and Kuruman a fortnight later.  Many things had occasioned unexpected delay, and the last crowning detention was caused by the breaking down of a wheel.  It turned out, however, that these delays were probably the means of saving his life.  Had they not occurred he would have reached Kolobeng in August.  But this was the very time when the commando of the Boers, numbering 600 colonists and many natives besides, were busy with the work of death and destruction.  Had he been at Kolobeng, Pretorius would probably have executed his threat of killing him; at the least he would have been deprived of all the property that he carried with him, and his projected enterprise would have been brought to an end.

In a letter to his wife, Livingstone gives full details of the horrible outrage perpetrated shortly before by the Boers at Kolobeng: 

“Kuruman, 20th September, 1852.—­Along with this I send you a long letter; this I write in order to give you the latest news.  The Boers gutted our house at Kolobeng; they brought four wagons down and took away sofa, table, bed, all the crockery, your desk (I hope it had nothing in it—­Have you the letters?), smashed the wooden chairs, took away the iron ones, tore out the leaves of all the books, and scattered them in front of the house, smashed the bottles containing medicines, windows, oven-door, took away the smith-bellows, anvil, all the tools,—­in fact everything worth taking; three corn-mills, a bag of coffee, for which I paid six pounds, and lots of coffee, tea, and sugar, which the gentlemen who went to the north left; took all our cattle and Paul’s and Mebalwe’s.  They then went up to Limauee, went to church morning and afternoon, and heard Mebalwe preach!  After the second service they told Sechele that they had come to fight, because he allowed Englishmen to proceed to the North, though they had repeatedly ordered him not to do so.  He replied that he was a man of peace, that he could not molest Englishmen, because they had never done him any harm, and always treated him well.  In the morning they commenced firing on the town with swivels, and set fire to it.  The heat forced some of the women to flee, the men to huddle together on the small hill in the middle of the town; the smoke prevented them seeing the Boers, and the cannon killed many, sixty (60) Bakwains.  The Boers then came near to kill and destroy them all, but the Bakwains killed thirty-five (35), and many horses.  They fought the whole day, but the Boers could not dislodge them.