n and children are among the slain. The
Boers were 600, and they had 700 natives with them. All the
corn is burned. Parties went out and burned Bangwaketse town,
and swept off all the cattle. Sebubi's cattle are all gone.
All the Bakhatla cattle gone. Neither Bangwaketse nor
Bakhatla fired a shot. All the corn burned of the whole three
tribes. Everything edible is taken from them. How will they
live! They told Sechele that the Queen had given off the land
to them, and henceforth they were the masters,--had abolished
chieftainship. Sir Harry Smith tried the same, and England
has paid two millions of money to catch one chief, and he is
still as free as the winds of heaven. How will it end? I
don't know, but I will tell you the beginning. There are two
parties of Boers gone to the Lake. These will to a dead
certainty be cut off. They amount to thirty-six men. Parties
are sent now in pursuit of them. The Bakwains will plunder
and murder the Boers without mercy, and by and by the Boers
will ask the English Government to assist them to put down
rebellion, and of this rebellion I shall have, of course, to
bear the blame. They often expressed a wish to get hold of
me. I wait here a little in order to get information when the
path is clear. Kind Providence detained me from falling into
the very thick of it. God will preserve me still. He has work
for me or He would have allowed me to go in just when the
Boers were there. We shall remove more easily now that we are
lightened of our furniture. They have taken away our sofa. I
never had a good rest on it. We had only got it ready when we
left. Well, they can't have taken away all the stones. We
shall have a seat in spite of them, and that, too, with a
merry heart which doeth good like a medicine. I wonder what
the Peace Society would do with these worthies. They are
Christians. The Dutch predicants baptise all their children,
and admit them to the Lord's Supper...."
Dr. Livingstone was not disposed to restrain his indignation and grief
over his losses. For one so patient and good, he had a very large vial
of indignation, and on occasion poured it out right heartily over all
injustice and cruelty. On no heads was it ever discharged more freely
than on these Transvaal Boers. He made a formal representation of his
losses bot
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