nt injustice and
inhumanity to the black race could be combined, as he found it to be,
with kindness and general respectability, and even with the profession
of piety. He only came to comprehend this when, after more experience,
he understood the demoralization which the slave-system produces. It was
necessary for the Boers to possess themselves of children for servants,
and believing or fancying that in some tribe an insurrection was
plotting, they would fall on that tribe and bring off a number of the
children. The most foul massacres were justified on the ground that they
were necessary to subdue the troublesome tendencies of the people, and
therefore essential to permanent peace. Livingstone felt keenly that the
Boers who came to live among the Bakwains made no distinction between
them and the Caffres, although the Bechuanas were noted for honesty, and
never attacked either Boers or English. On the principle of elevating
vague rumors into alarming facts, the Boers of the Cashan Mountains,
having heard that Sechele was possessed of fire-arms (the number of his
muskets was five!) multiplied the number by a hundred, and threatened
him with an invasion. Livingstone, who was accused of supplying these
arms, went to the commandant Krieger, and prevailed upon him to defer
the expedition, but refused point-blank to comply with Krieger's wish
that he should act as a spy on the Bakwains. Threatening messages
continued to be sent to Sechele, ordering him to surrender himself, and
to prevent English traders from passing through his country, or selling
fire-arms to his people. On one occasion Livingstone was told by Mr.
Potgeiter, a leading Dutchman, that he would attack any tribe that might
receive a native teacher. Livingstone was so thoroughly identified with
the natives that it became the desire of the colonists to get rid of him
and all his belongings, and complaints were made of him to the Colonial
Government as a dangerous person that ought not to be let alone.

All this made it very clear to Livingstone that his favorite plan of
planting native teachers to the eastward could not be carried into
effect, at least for the present. His disappointment in this was only
another link in the chain of causes that gave to the latter part of his
life so unlooked-for but glorious a destination. It set him to inquire
whether in some other direction he might not find a sphere for planting
native teachers which the jealousy of the Boers