“We have now,” says Livingstone (March, 1847), “been a little more than a year with the Bakwains.  No conversions have taken place, but real progress has been made.”  He adverts to the way in which the Sabbath was observed, no work being done by the natives in the gardens that day, and hunting being suspended.  Their superstitious belief in rain-maiking had got a blow.  There was a real desire for knowledge, though hindered by the prevailing famine caused by the want of rain.  There was also a general impression among the people that the missionaries were their friends.  But civilization apart from conversion would be but a poor recompense for their labor.

But, whatever success might attend their work among the Bakwains, Livingstone’s soul was soaring beyond them: 

“I am more and more convinced,” he writes to the Directors, “that in order to the permanent settlement of the gospel in any part, the natives must be taught to relinquish their reliance on Europe.  An onward movement ought to be made whether men will hear or whether they will forbear.  I tell my Bakwains that if spared ten years, I shall move on to regions beyond them.  If our missions would move onward now to those regions I have lately visited, they would in all probability prevent the natives settling into that state of determined hatred to all Europeans which I fear now characterizes most of the Caffres near the Colony.  If natives are not elevated by contact with Europeans, they are sure to be deteriorated.  It is with pain I have observed that all the tribes I have lately seen are undergoing the latter process.  The country is fine.  It abounds in streams, and has many considerable rivers.  The Boers hate missionaries, but by a kind and prudent course of conduct one can easily manage them.  Medicines are eagerly received, and I intend to procure a supply of Dutch tracts for distribution among them.  The natives who have been in subjection to Mosilikatse place unbounded confidence in missionaries.”

In his letters to friends at home, whatever topic Livingstone may touch, we see evidence of one over-mastering idea—­the vastness of Africa, and the duty of beginning a new area of enterprise to reach its people.  Among his friends the Scotch Congregationalists, there had been a keen controversy on some points of Calvinism.  Livingstone did not like it; he was not a high Calvinist theoretically, yet he could not accept the new views, “from a secret feeling of being absolutely at the divine disposal as a sinner;” but these were theoretical questions, and with dark Africa around him, he did not see why the brethren at home should split on them.  Missionary influence in South Africa was directed in a wrong channel.  There were three times too many missionaries in the colony, and vast regions beyond lay untouched.  He wrote to Mr. Watt:  “If you meet me down in the colony before eight years are expired, you may shoot me.”

Of his employments and studies he gives the following account:  “I get the Evangelical, Scottish Congregational, Eclectic, Lancet, British and Foreign Medical Review.  I can read in journeying, but little at home.  Building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering, wagon-mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing on physics according to my means, beside a chair in divinity to a class of three, fill up my time.”