The Directors wished me to endeavor to carry the gospel to the tribes north of the Kuruman.  Having remained at that station sufficient time only to recruit my oxen, I proceeded in the direction indicated, and while learning the language I visited the Bakhatla, Bakwains, Bangwaketse, and Bamangwato tribes, in order to select a suitable locality for a mission, in the hope of succeeding in making a second Kuruman or central station, which would, by God’s blessing, influence a large circumference.  I chose Mabotsa, no one who has seen that country since has said the choice was injudicious.  The late Rev. Dr. Philip alone was opposed to this plan on account of solicitude for my safety, “because Mosilikatse was behind the Cashan mountains thirsting for the blood of the first white man who should fall into his hands.  And no man would in his sober senses build his house on the crater of a volcano.”  Having removed to the Bakwains of Sechele, I spent some of the happiest years of my life in missionary labor, and was favored in witnessing a gratifying measure of success in the spread of the knowledge of the gospel.  The good seed was widely sown, and is not lost.  It will yet bear fruit, though I may not live to see it.  In the pursuit of my plan I tried to plant among the tribes around by means of native teachers and itineracies.  We have heard again and again of a “preparatory work going on” in India, but who ever heard of such in Africa?  A village of 600 or 800 may have one, or even two missionaries, with school-masters and schoolmistresses, and the nearest population, fifty or one hundred miles off, cannot feel their influence.  Believers will not, in many cases, go beyond the circle of their own friends and acquaintances.

I was happy in having two worthy men of color, to aid me in diffusing a knowledge of Christ among the Eastern tribes, but the Boers forbade us to preach unto the Gentiles that they might be saved.  My attention was turned to Sebituane by Sechele at the very time this happened, but I had no intention of leaving the Bakwains.  Droughts succeeded, and these, with perpetual threats and annoyances from the Boers, so completely distracted the mind of the tribe that our operations were almost suspended.  It is well known that food for the mind has but little savor for starving stomachs.  The famine, and the unmistakable determination of the Boers to enslave my people, at last made me look to the north seriously.  There was no precipitancy.  Letters went to and from India respecting my project before resolving to leave, and I went at last, after being obliged to send my family to Kuruman in order to be out of the way of a threatened attack of the Boers.  When we reached Lake ’Ngami, about which so much has been said, I immediately asked for guides to take me to Sebituane, because to form a settlement in which the gospel might be planted was the great object for which I had come.  Guides were refused, and the Bayeiye were prevented from ferrying me across the