he had just arrived.  I did not know well what to do now, but I was not in perplexity long, for Pomare, a native convert who accompanied us, started up and defended her cause.  He being the son of a chief, and possessed of some little authority, managed the matter nicely.  She had been loaded with beads to render her more attractive, and fetch a higher price.  These she stripped off and gave to the man, and desired him to go away.  I afterward took measures for hiding her, and though fifty men had come for her, they would not have got her.”

The story reads like an allegory or a prophecy.  In the person of the little maid, oppressed and enslaved Africa comes to the good Doctor for protection; instinctively she knows she may trust him; his heart opens at once, his ingenuity contrives a way of protection and deliverance, and he will never give her up.  It is a little picture of Livingstone’s life.

In fulfillment of a promise made to the natives in the interior that he would return to them, Livingstone set out on a second tour into the interior of the Bechuana country on 10th February, 1842.  His objects were, first, to acquire the native language more perfectly, and second, by suspending his medical practice, which had become inconveniently large at Kuruman, to give his undivided attention to the subject of native agents.  He took with him two native members of the Kuruman church, and two other natives for the management of the wagon.

The first person that specially engaged his interest in this journey was a chief of the name of Bubi, whose people were Bakwains.  With him he stationed one of the native agents as a teacher, the chief himself collecting the children and supplying them with food.  The honesty of the people was shown in their leaving untouched all the contents of his wagon, though crowds of them visited it.  Livingstone was already acquiring a powerful influence, both with chiefs and people, the result of his considerate and conciliatory treatment of both.  He had already observed the failure of some of his brethren to influence them, and his sagacity had discerned the cause.  His success in inducing Bubi’s people to dig a canal was contrasted in a characteristic passage of a private letter, with the experience of others.

“The doctor and the rainmaker among these people are one and the same person.  As I did not like to be behind my professional brethren, I declared I could make rain too, not, however, by enchantments like them, but by leading out their river for irrigation.  The idea pleased mightily, and to work we went instanter.  Even the chief’s own doctor is at it, and works like a good fellow, laughing heartily at the cunning of the ‘foreigner’ who can make rain so.  We have only one spade, and this is without a handle; and yet by means of sticks sharpened to a point we have performed all the digging of a pretty long canal.  The earth was lifted out in ‘gowpens’ and carried to the huge