“I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I was not born in a land of slaves.  No one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal in virtue to ourselves.”

After giving his experience of eight years in Sechele’s country, in Bechuanaland, Livingstone continues:—­“During that time, no winter passed without one or two of the tribes in the east country being plundered of both cattle and children by the Boers.  The plan pursued is the following:  one or two friendly tribes are forced to accompany a party of mounted Boers.  When they reach the tribe to be attacked, the friendly natives are ranged in front, to form, as they say, ‘a shield;’ the Boers then coolly fire over their heads till the devoted people flee and leave cattle, wives and children to their captors.  This was done in nine cases during my residence in the interior, and on no occasion was a drop of Boer’s blood shed.  News of these deeds spread quickly among the Bechuanas, and letters were repeatedly sent by the Boers to Sechele, ordering him to come and surrender himself as their vassal, and stop English traders from proceeding into the country.  But the discovery of lake Ngami, hereafter to be described, made the traders come in five-fold greater numbers, and Sechele replied, ’I was made an independent chief and placed here by God, and not by you.  I was never conquered by Mosilikatze, as those tribes whom you rule over; and the English are my friends; I get everything I wish from them; I cannot hinder them from going where they like.’  Those who are old enough to remember the threatened invasion of our own island, may understand the effect which the constant danger of a Boer invasion had on the minds of the Bechuanas; but no others can conceive how worrying were the messages and threats from the endless self-constituted authorities of the Magaliesberg Boers, and when to all this harassing annoyance was added the scarcity produced by the drought, we could not wonder at, though we felt sorry for, their indisposition to receive instruction.

“I attempted to benefit the native tribes among the Boers of Magaliesberg by placing native teachers at different points.  ’You must teach the blacks,’ said Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter, the commandant in chief, ‘that they are not equal to us.’  Other Boers told me ’I might as well teach the baboons on the rocks as the Africans,’ but declined the test which I proposed, namely, to examine whether they or my native attendants could read best.  Two of their clergymen came to baptize the children of the Boers, so, supposing these good men would assist me in overcoming the repugnance of their flock to the education of the blacks, I called on them, but my visit ended in a ruse practised by the Boerish commandant, whereby I was led, by professions of the greatest friendship, to retire to Kolobeng, while a letter passed me, by another way, to the missionaries in the south, demanding my instant recall for ’lending a cannon to their enemies.’[14]