ndo of the Boers,
numbering 600 colonists and many natives besides, were busy with the
work of death and destruction. Had he been at Kolobeng, Pretorius would
probably have executed his threat of killing him; at the least he would
have been deprived of all the property that he carried with him, and his
projected enterprise would have been brought to an end.

In a letter to his wife, Livingstone gives full details of the horrible
outrage perpetrated shortly before by the Boers at Kolobeng:

"_Kuruman, 20th September_, 1852.--Along with this I send you
a long letter; this I write in order to give you the latest
news. The Boers gutted our house at Kolobeng; they brought
four wagons down and took away sofa, table, bed, all the
crockery, your desk (I hope it had nothing in it--Have you
the letters?), smashed the wooden chairs, took away the iron
ones, tore out the leaves of all the books, and scattered
them in front of the house, smashed the bottles containing
medicines, windows, oven-door, took away the smith-bellows,
anvil, all the tools,--in fact everything worth taking; three
corn-mills, a bag of coffee, for which I paid six pounds, and
lots of coffee, tea, and sugar, which the gentlemen who went
to the north left; took all our cattle and Paul's and
Mebalwe's. They then went up to Limauee, went to church
morning and afternoon, and heard Mebalwe preach! After the
second service they told Sechele that they had come to fight,
because he allowed Englishmen to proceed to the North, though
they had repeatedly ordered him not to do so. He replied that
he was a man of peace, that he could not molest Englishmen,
because they had never done him any harm, and always treated
him well. In the morning they commenced firing on the town
with swivels, and set fire to it. The heat forced some of the
women to flee, the men to huddle together on the small hill
in the middle of the town; the smoke prevented them seeing
the Boers, and the cannon killed many, sixty (60) Bakwains.
The Boers then came near to kill and destroy them all, but
the Bakwains killed thirty-five (35), and many horses. They
fought the whole day, but the Boers could not dislodge them.
They stopped firing in the evening, and then the Bakwains
retired on account of having no water. The above sixty are
not all men; wome