Privations and dangers frequently attended these itinerating journeys.  Referring to one of them Robert Moffat states, “After tying my Bible and hymn-book in a blanket to the back of my saddle, and taking a good draught of milk, I started with my interpreter, who rode upon an ox.  We had our guns, but nothing in our purse or scrip, save a pipe, some tobacco, and a tinder-box.  After a hot day’s ride to reach a village, the people would give us a draught of sweet milk, and then old and young, assembling in a nook of the fold, among the kine, would listen to my address on the great concerns of their soul’s salvation.  I exhorted those who could read to read to others and try to teach them to do the same, promising them a reward in heaven, for I had none to give on earth.  When service was over, having taken another draught of milk, and renewed my conversation with the people, I lay down on a mat to repose for the night.  Sometimes a kind housewife would hang a bamboos, a wooden vessel filled with milk, on a forked stick near my head, that I might, if necessary, drink during the night.”

Once he slept on the ground near the hut in which the principal man of the village and his wife reposed.  During the night a noise as of cattle broken loose was heard.  In the morning he remarked upon this to his host, when that individual replied, “Oh, I was looking at the spoor this morning, it was the lion!” adding that a few nights previously a goat had been seized from the very spot on which Moffat had been sleeping.  Upon Moffat asking him why he had put him to sleep there, the man replied, “Oh, the lion would not have the audacity to jump over on you.”

Sometimes it happened that after travelling all day, hoping to reach a village at night, the travellers would find when they got to the place that all the people had gone.  Then hungry and thirsty they had to pass the night.  In the morning after searching for water, and partaking of a draught if they were successful in finding it, they would start off again with their hunger unsatisfied, and deem themselves fortunate if they overtook the migrating party that evening.

Of his ordinary manner of living at this time, he says, “My food was milk and meat, living for weeks together on one, and then for a while on the other, and again on both together.  All was well so long as I had either, but sometimes they both failed, and there were no shops in the country where I could have purchased, and, had there been any, I must have bought on credit, for money I had none.”

His wardrobe bore the same impress of poverty as his larder.  The clothes received when in London soon went to pieces, and the knowledge of sewing and knitting, unwillingly learnt from his mother, often now stood him in good stead.  She once showed him how a shirt might be smoothed by folding it properly and hammering it with a piece of wood.  Resolving one day to have a nice one for the Sabbath, Moffat tried