My attention was
turned to Sebituane by Sechele at the very time this happened, but I had
no intention of leaving the Bakwains. Droughts succeeded, and these,
with perpetual threats and annoyances from the Boers, so completely
distracted the mind of the tribe that our operations were almost
suspended. It is well known that food for the mind has but little savor
for starving stomachs. The famine, and the unmistakable determination of
the Boers to enslave my people, at last made me look to the north
seriously. There was no precipitancy. Letters went to and from India
respecting my project before resolving to leave, and I went at last,
after being obliged to send my family to Kuruman in order to be out of
the way of a threatened attack of the Boers. When we reached Lake
'Ngami, about which so much has been said, I immediately asked for
guides to take me to Sebituane, because to form a settlement in which
the gospel might be planted was the great object for which I had come.
Guides were refused, and the Bayeiye were prevented from ferrying me
across the Zouga. I made a raft, but after working in the water for
hours it would not carry me. (I have always been thankful, since I knew
how alligators abound there, that I was not then killed by one.) Next
year affairs were not improved at Kolobeng, and while attempting the
north again fever drove us back. In both that and the following year I
took my family with me in order to obviate the loss of time which
returning for them would occasion. The Boers subsequently, by relieving
me of all my goods, freed me from the labor of returning to Kolobeng
at all.

Of the circumstances attending our arrival at Sebituane's, and the
project of opening up a path to the coast, you are already so fully
aware, from having examined and awarded your approbation, I need
scarcely allude to it. Double the time has been expended to that which I
anticipated, but as it chiefly arose from sickness, the loss of time was
unavoidable. The same cause produced interruptions in preaching the
gospel--as would have been the case had I been indisposed anywhere else.

The foregoing short notices of all the plans which I can bring to my
recollection since my arrival in Africa lead me to the question, which
of the plans it is that the Directors particularize when they say they
are restricted in their power of aiding plans only remotely connected
with the spread of the gospel. It cannot be the last surely, for I had