In his next letter to the London Missionary Society, dated Kuruman, 23d September, 1841, he gives his impressions of the field, and unfolds an idea which took hold of him at the very beginning, and never lost its grip.  It was, that there was not population enough about the South to justify a concentration of missionary labor there, and that the policy of the Society ought to be one of expansion, moving out far and wide wherever there was an opening, and making the utmost possible use of native agency, in order to cultivate so wide a field.  In England he had thought that Kuruman might be made a great missionary institute, whence the beams of divine truth might diverge in every direction, through native agents supplied from among the converts; but since he came to the spot he had been obliged to abandon that notion; not that the Kuruman mission had not been successful, or that the attendance at public worship was small, but simply because the population was meagre, and seemed more likely to become smaller than larger.  The field from which native agents might be drawn was thus too small.  Farther north there was a denser population.  It was therefore his purpose, along with a brother missionary, to make an early journey to the interior, and bury himself among the natives, to learn their language, and slip into their modes of thinking and feeling.  He purposed to take with him two of the best qualified native Christians of Kuruman, to plant them as teachers in some promising locality; and in case any difficulty should arise about their maintenance, he offered, with characteristic generosity, to defray the cost of one of them from his own resources.

Accordingly, in company with a brother missionary from Kuruman, a journey of seven hundred miles was performed before the end of the year, leading chiefly to two results:  in the first place, a strong confirmation of his views on the subject of native agency; and in the second place, the selection of a station, two hundred and fifty miles north of Kuruman, as the most suitable for missionary operations.  Seven hundred miles traveled over more Africano seemed to indicate a vast territory; but on looking at it on the map, it was a mere speck on the continent of heathenism.  How was that continent ever to be evangelized?  He could think of no method except an extensive method of native agency.  And the natives, when qualified, were admirably qualified.  Their warm, affectionate manner of dealing with their fellow-men, their ability to present the truth to their minds freed from the strangeness of which foreigners could not divest it, and the eminent success of those employed by the brethren of Griqua Town, were greatly in their favor.  Two natives had likewise been employed recently by the Kuruman Mission, and these had been highly efficient and successful.  If the Directors would allow him to employ more of these, conversions would increase in a compound ratio, and regions not yet explored by Europeans would soon be supplied with the bread of life.