with the spread of the gospel, and that even though certain
obstacles (from tsetse, etc.) should prove surmountable, "the financial
circumstances of the Society are not such as to afford any ground of
hope that it would be in a position within any definite period to
undertake untried any remote and difficult fields of labor." Dr.
Livingstone very naturally understood this as a declinature of his
proposals. Writing on the subject to Rev. William Thompson, the
Society's agent at Cape Town, he said:

"I had imagined in my simplicity that both my preaching,
conversation, and travel were as nearly connected with the
spread of the gospel as the Boers would allow them to be. A
plan of opening up a path from either the East or West Coast
for the teeming population of the interior was submitted to
the judgment of the Directors, and received their formal
approbation.

"I have been seven times in peril of my life from savage men
while laboriously and without swerving pursuing that plan,
and never doubting that I was in the path of duty.

"Indeed, so clearly did I perceive that I was performing good
service to the cause of Christy that I wrote to my brother
that I would perish rather than fail in my enterprise. I
shall not boast of what I have done, but the wonderful mercy
I have received will constrain me to follow out the work in
spite of the veto of the Board.

"If it is according to the will of God, means will be
provided from other quarters."

A long letter to the Secretary gives a fuller statement of his views. It
is so important as throwing light on his missionary consistency, that we
give it in full in the Appendix[47].

[Footnote 47: Appendix No. III.]

The Directors showed a much more sympathetic spirit when Livingstone
came among them, but meanwhile, as he tells us in his book, his old
feeling of independence had returned, and it did not seem probable that
he would remain in the same relation to the Society.

After Livingstone had been six weeks at Quilimane, H.M. brig "Frolic"
arrived, with ample supplies for all his need, and took him to the
Mauritius, where he arrived on 12th August, 1856. It was during this
voyage that the lamentable insanity and suicide of his native attendant
Sekwebu occurred, of which we have an account in the _Missionary
Travels_. At the Mauritius he was the guest of General Hay, from whom
he rec