Livingstone then returned to Chonuane, finished the erection of a school there, and setting systematic instruction fairly in operation under Paul and his son, Isaac, again went eastward, accompanied this time by Mrs. Livingstone and their infant son, Robert Moffat[25]—­all the three being in indifferent health.  Mebalwe, the catechist, was also with them.  Taking a different route, they came on another Bakhatla tribe, whose country abounded in metallic ores, and who, besides cultivating their fields, span cotton, smelted iron, copper, and tin, made an alloy of tin and copper, and manufactured ornaments.  Livingstone had constantly an eye to the industries and commercial capabilities of the countries he passed through.  Social reform was certainly much needed here; for the chief, though not twenty years of age, had already forty-eight wives and twenty children.  They heard of another tribe, said to excel all others in manufacturing skill, and having the honorable distinction, “they had never been known to kill any one.”  This lily among thorns they were unable to visit.  Three tribes of Bakhalaka whom they did visit were at continual war.

[Footnote 25:  He wrote to his father that he would have called him Neil, if it had not been such an ugly name, and all the people would have called him Ra-Neeley!]

Deriving his information from the Boers themselves, Livingstone learned that they had taken possession of nearly all the fountains, so that the natives lived in the country only by sufferance.  The chiefs were compelled to furnish the emigrants with as much free labor as they required.  This was in return for the privilege of living in the country of the Boers!  The absence of law left the natives open to innumerable wrongs which the better-disposed of the emigrants lamented, but could not prevent.  Livingstone found that the forcible seizure of cattle was a common occurrence, but another custom was even worse.  When at war, the Dutch forced natives to assist them, and sent them before them into battle, to encounter the battle-axes of their opponents, while the Dutch fired in safety at their enemies over the heads of their native allies.  Of course all the disasters of the war fell on the natives; the Dutch had only the glory and the spoil.  Such treatment of the natives burned into the very soul of Livingstone.  He was specially distressed at the purpose expressed to pick a quarrel with Sechele, for whatever the emigrants might say of other tribes, they could not but admit that the Bechuanas had been always an honest and peaceable people.

When Livingstone met the Dutch commandant he received favorably his proposal of a native missionary, but another obstacle arose.  Near the proposed station lived a Dutch emigrant who had shown himself the inveterate enemy of missions.  He had not scrupled to say that the proper way to treat any native missionary was to kill him.  Livingstone was unwilling to plant Mebalwe beside so bloodthirsty a neighbor**(spelling?), and as he had not time to, go to him, and try to bring him to a better mind, and there was plenty of work to be done at the station, they all returned to Chonuane.