doctrines of Christianity into my mind. My
early desire was to become a pioneer missionary in China, and eventually
I offered my services to the London Missionary Society, having passed my
medical examination at Glasgow University.

I embarked for Africa in 1840, and from Cape Town travelled up country
seven hundred miles to Kuruman, where I joined Mr. Moffat in his work,
and after four years as a bachelor, I married his daughter Mary.

Settling among the Mabotsa tribe, I found that they were troubled with
attacks from lions, so one day I went with my gun into the bush and shot
one, but the wounded beast sprang upon me, and felled me to the ground.
While perfectly conscious, I lost all sense of fear or feeling, and
narrowly escaped with my life. Besides crunching the bone into
splinters, he left eleven teeth wounds on the upper part of my arm.

I attached myself to the tribe called Bakwains, whose chief, Sechele, a
most intelligent man, became my fast friend, and a convert to
Christianity. The Bakwains had many excellent qualities, which might
have been developed by association with European nations. An adverse
influence, however, is exercised by the Boers, for, while claiming for
themselves the title of Christians, they treat these natives as black
property, and their system of domestic slavery and robbery is a disgrace
to the white man. For my defence of the rights of Sechele and the
Bakwains, I was treated as conniving at their resistance, and my house
was destroyed, my library, the solace of our solitude, torn to pieces,
my stock of medicines smashed, and our furniture and clothing sold at
public auction to pay the expenses of the foray.

In travelling we sometimes suffered from a scarcity of meat, and the
natives, to show their sympathy for the children, often gave them
caterpillars to eat; but one of the dishes they most enjoyed was cooked
"mathametlo," a large frog, which, during a period of drought, takes
refuge in a hole in the root of certain bushes, and over the orifice a
large variety of spider weaves its web. The scavenger-beetle, which
keeps the Kuruman villages sweet and clean, rolls the dirt into a ball,
and carries it, like Atlas, on its back.

In passing across the great Kalahari desert we met with the Bushmen, or
Bakalahari, who, from dread of visits from strange tribes, choose their
residences far away from water, hiding their supplies of this necessity
for life in pits filled up by women, who p