ur corn was done, we were
fairly obliged to go to Kuruman for supplies. I can bear what
other Europeans would consider hunger and thirst without any
inconvenience, but when we arrived, to hear the old woman who
had seen my wife depart about two years before, exclaiming
before the door, 'Bless me! how lean she is! Has he starved
her? Is there no food in the country to which she has been?'
was more than I could well bear."

From the first, Sechele showed an intelligent interest in Livingstone's
preaching. He became a great reader especially of the Bible, and
lamented very bitterly that he had got involved in heathen customs, and
now did not know what to do with his wives. At one time he expressed
himself quite willing to convert all his people to Christianity by the
litupa, _i.e._ whips of rhinoceros hide; but when he came to understand
better, he lamented that while he could make his people do anything else
he liked, he could not get one of them to believe. He began family
worship, and Livingstone was surprised to hear how well he conducted
prayer in his own simple and beautiful style. When he was baptized,
after a profession of three years, he sent away his superfluous wives in
a kindly and generous way; but all their connections became active and
bitter enemies of the gospel, and the conversion of Sechele, instead of
increasing the congregation, reduced it so much that sometimes the chief
and his family were almost the only persons present. A bell-man of a
somewhat peculiar order was once employed to collect the people for
service--a tall gaunt fellow. "Up he jumped on a sort of platform, and
shouted at the top of his voice, 'Knock that woman down over there.
Strike her, she is putting on her pot! Do you see that one hiding
herself? Give her a good blow. There she is--see, see, knock her down!'
All the women ran to the place of meeting in no time, for each thought
herself meant. But, though a most efficient bell-man, we did not like to
employ him."

While residing at Chonuane, Livingstone performed two journeys eastward,
in order to attempt the removal of certain obstacles to the
establishment of at least one of his native teachers in that direction.
This brought him into connection with the Dutch Boers of the Cashan
mountains, otherwise called Magaliesberg. The Boers were emigrants from
the Cape, who had been dissatisfied with the British rule, and
especially with the emancipation