“Janet may be pleased to learn that I am become a poet, or rather a poetaster, in Sichuana.  Half a dozen of my hymns were lately printed in a collection of the French brethren.  One of them is a translation of ’There is a fountain filled with blood;’ another, ‘Jesus shall reign where’er the sun;’ others are on ’The earth being filled with the glory of the Lord,’ ‘Self-dedication,’ ‘Invitation to Sinners,’ ’The soul that loves God finds him everywhere.’  Janet may try to make English ones on these latter subjects if she can, and Agnes will doubtless set them to music on the same condition.  I do not boast of having done this, but only mention it to let you know that I am getting a little better fitted for the great work of a missionary, that your hearts may be drawn out to more prayer for the success of the gospel proclaimed by my feeble lips.”

Livingstone was bent on advancing in the direction of the country of the Matebele and their chief Mosilikatse, but the dread of that terrible warrior prevented him from getting Bakwains to accompany him, and being thus unable to rig out a wagon, he was obliged to travel on oxback.  In a letter to Dr. Risdon Bennett (30th June, 1843), he gives a lively description of this mode of traveling:  “It is rough traveling, as you can conceive.  The skin is so loose there is no getting one’s great-coat, which has to serve both as saddle and blanket, to stick on; and then the long horns in front, with which he can give one a punch in the abdomen if he likes, make us sit as bolt upright as dragoons.  In this manner I traveled more than 400 miles.”  Visits to some of the villages of the Bakalahari gave him much pleasure.  He was listened to with great attention, and while sitting by their fires and listening to their traditionary tales, he intermingled the story of the Cross with their conversation, and it was by far the happiest portion of his journey.  The people were a poor, degraded, enslaved race, who hunted for other tribes to procure them skins; they were far from wells, and had their gardens far from their houses, in order to have their produce safe from the chiefs who visited them.

Coming on to his old friends the Bakaa, he found them out of humor with him, accusing him of having given poison to a native who had been seized with fever on occasion of his former visit.  Consequently he could get little or nothing to eat, and had to content himself, as he wrote to his friends, with the sumptuous feasts of his imagination.  With his usual habit of discovering good in all his troubles, however, he found cause for thankfulness at their stinginess, for in coming down a steep pass, absorbed with the questions which the people were putting to him, he forgot where he was, lost his footing, and, striking his hand between a rock and his Bible which he was carrying, he suffered a compound fracture of his finger.  His involuntary low diet saved him from taking fever, and the finger was healing favorably,