again and again at their calmness.  In cutting out a tumor, an inch in diameter, they sit and talk as if they felt nothing.  ’A man like me never cries,’ they say, ‘they are children that cry.’  And it is a fact that the men never cry.  But when the Spirit of God works on their minds they cry most piteously.  Sometimes in church they endeavor to screen themselves from the eyes of the preacher by hiding under the forms or covering their heads with their karosses as a remedy against their convictions.  And when they find that won’t do, they rush out of the church and run with all their might, crying as if the hand of death were behind them.  One would think, when they got away, there they would remain; but no, there they are in their places at the very next meeting.  It is not to be wondered at that they should exhibit agitations of body when the mind is affected, as they are quite unaccustomed to restrain their feelings.  But that the hardened beings should be moved mentally at all is wonderful indeed.  If you saw them in their savage state you would feel the force of this more.... N.B.—­I have got for Professor Owen specimens of the incubated ostrich in abundance, and am waiting for an opportunity to transmit the box to the college.  I tried to keep for you some of the fine birds of the interior, but the weather was so horribly hot they were putrid in a few hours.

When he returned to Kuruman in June, 1842, he found that no instructions had as yet come from the Directors as to his permanent quarters.  He was preparing for another journey when news arrived that contrary to his advice, Sebehwe had left the desert where he was encamped, had been treacherously attacked by the chief Mahura, and that many of his people, including women and children, had been savagely murdered.  What aggravated the case was that several native Christians from Kuruman had been at the time with Sebehwe, and that these were accused of having acted treacherously by him.  But now no native would expose himself to the expected rage of Sebehwe, so that for want of attendants Livingstone could not go to him.  He was obliged to remain for some months about Kuruman, itinerating to the neighboring tribes, and taking part in the routine work of the station:  that is to say preaching, printing, building a chapel at an out-station, prescribing for the sick, and many things else that would have been intolerable, he said, to a man of “clerical dignity.”

He was able to give his father a very encouraging report of the mission work (July 13, 1842):  “The work of God goes on here notwithstanding all our infirmities.  Souls are gathered in continually, and sometimes from among those you would never have expected to see turning to the Lord.  Twenty-four were added to the Church last month, and there are several inquirers.  At Motito, a French station about thirty-three miles northeast of this, there has been an awakening, and I hope much good will result.  I have good news, too, from Rio de Janeiro.  The Bibles that have been distributed are beginning to cause a stir.”