The state of the country continued so disturbed that it was not till February, 1843, that he was able to set out for the village where Sebehwe had taken up his residence with the remains of his tribe.  This visit he undertook at great personal risk.  Though looking at first very ill-pleased, Sebehwe treated him in a short time in a most friendly way, and on the Sunday after his arrival, sent a herald to proclaim that on that day nothing should be done but pray to God and listen to the words of the foreigner.  He himself listened with great attention while Livingstone told him of Jesus and the resurrection, and the missionary was often interrupted by the questions of the chief.  Here, then, was another chief pacified, and brought under the preaching of the gospel.

Livingstone then passed on to the country of the Bakhatla, where he had purposed to erect his mission-station.  The country was fertile, and the people industrious, and among other industries was an iron manufactory, to which as a bachelor he got admission, whereas married men were wont to be excluded, through fear that they would bewitch the iron!  When he asked the chief if he would like him to come and be his missionary, he held up his hands and said, “Oh, I shall dance if you do; I shall collect all my people to hoe for you a garden, and you will get more sweet reed and corn than myself.”  The cautious Directors at home, however, had sent no instructions as to Livingstone’s station, and he could only say to the chief that he would tell them of his desire for a missionary.

At a distance of five days’ journey beyond the Bakhatla was situated the village of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, afterward one of Livingstone’s greatest friends.  Sechele had been enraged at him for not visiting him the year before, and threatened him with mischief.  It happened that his only child was ill when the missionary arrived, and also the child of one of his principal men.  Livingstone’s treatment of both was successful, and Sechele had not an angry word.  Some of his questions struck the heart of the missionary: 

“’Since it is true that all who die unforgiven are lost forever, why did your nation not come to tell us of it before now?  My ancestors are all gone, and none of them knew anything of what you tell me.  How is this?’ I thought immediately,” says Livingstone, “of the guilt of the Church, but did not confess.  I told him multitudes in our own country were like himself, so much in love with their sins.  My ancestors had spent a great deal of time in trying to persuade them, and yet after all many of them by refusing were lost.  We now wish to tell all the world about a Saviour, and if men did not believe, the guilt would be entirely theirs.  Sechele has been driven from another part of his country from that in which he was located last year, and so has Bubi, so that the prospects I had of benefiting them by native teachers are for the present darkened.”

Among other things that Livingstone found time for in these wanderings among strange people, was translating hymns into the Sichuana language.  Writing to his father (Bakwain Country, 21st March, 1843), he says: