The travelers were still a good many days’ distance from Ma-mochisane, without whose presence nothing could be settled; but besides, the reedy banks of the rivers were found to be unsuitable for a settlement, and the higher regions were too much exposed to the attacks of Mosilikatse.  Livingstone saw no prospect of obtaining a suitable station, and with great reluctance he made up his mind to retrace the weary road, and return to Kolobeng.  The people were very anxious for him to stay, and offered to make a garden for him, and to fulfill Sebituane’s promise to give him oxen in return for those killed by the tsetse.

Setting out with the wagons on 13th August, 1851, the party proceeded slowly homeward.  On 15th September, 1851, Livingstone’s Journal has this unexpected and simple entry:  “A son, William Oswell Livingstone[32], born at a place we always call Bellevue.”  On the 18th:  “Thomas attacked by fever; removed to a high part on his account.  Thomas was seized with fever three times at about an interval of a fortnight.”  Not a word about Mrs. Livingstone, but three pages of observations about medical treatment of fever, thunderstorms, constitutions of Indian and African people, leanness of the game, letter received from Directors approving generally of his course, a gold watch sent by Captain Steele, and Gordon Cumming’s book, “a miserably poor thing.”  Amazed, we ask, Had Livingstone any heart?  But ere long we come upon a copy of a letter, and some remarks connected with it, that give us an impression of the depth and strength of his nature, unsurpassed by anything that has yet occurred.

[Footnote 32:  He had intended to call him Charles, and announced this to his father; but, finding that Mr. Oswell, to whom he was so much indebted, would be pleased with the compliment, he changed his purpose and the name accordingly.]

“The following extracts,” he says, “show in what light our efforts are regarded by those who, as much as we do, desire that the ’gospel may be preached to all nations,’” Then follows a copy of a letter which had been addressed to him before they set out by Mrs. Moffat, his mother-in-law, remonstrating in the strongest terms against his plan of taking his wife with him; reminding him of the death of the child, and other sad occurrences of last year; and in the name of everything that was just, kind, and even decent, beseeching him to abandon an arrangement which all the world would condemn.  Another letter from the same writer informed him that much prayer had been offered that, if the arrangements were not in accordance with Christian propriety, he might in great mercy be prevented by some dispensation of Providence from carrying them out.  Mrs. Moffat was a woman of the highest gifts and character, and full of admiration for Livingstone.  The insertion of these letters in his Journal shows that, in carrying out his plan, the objections to which it was liable were before his mind in the strongest conceivable form.  No man who knows what Livingstone was will imagine for a moment that he had not the most tender regard for the health, the comfort, and the feelings of his wife; in matters of delicacy he had the most scrupulous regard to propriety; his resolution to take her with him must, therefore, have sprung from something far stronger than even his affection for her.  What was this stronger force?