sion of face." He feels he has disappointed the boy and
forgotten his promise. Again and again Livingstone returns to the
subject, and feels assured that his young friend would forgive him if he
knew how much he suffered for his fault. That in the midst of his own
overwhelming troubles he should feel so much for the disappointment of a
little heart in England, shows how terrible a thing it was to him to
cause needless pain, and how profoundly it distressed him to seem
forgetful of a promise. Years afterward he wrote that he had brought an
elephant's tail for Henry, but one of the men stole all the hairs and
sold them. He had still a tusk of a hippopotamus for him, and a tooth
for his brother, but he had brought no curiosities, for he could
scarcely get along himself.]

But while he could relax playfully at the thought of the desolation at
Kolobeng, he knew how to make it the occasion likewise of high resolves.
The Boers, as he wrote the Directors, were resolved to shut up the
interior. He was determined, with God's help, to open the country. Time
would show which would be most successful in resolution,--they or he. To
his brother-in-law he wrote that he would open a path through the
country, _or perish_.

As for the contest with the Boers, we may smile at their impotent wrath.
It is a singular fact, that while Sechele still retains the position of
an independent chief, the republic of the Boers has passed away. It is
now part of the British Empire.

The country was so unsettled that for a long time Dr. Livingstone could
not get guides at Kuruman to go with him to Sebituane's. At length,
however, he succeeded, and leaving Kuruman finally about the end of
December, 1852, in company with George Fleming, Mr. Rutherfoord's
trader, he set out in a new direction, to the west of the old, in order
to give a wide berth to the Boers. Traveling rapidly he passed through
Sebituane's country, and in June, 1858, arrived at Linyanti, the capital
of the Makololo. He wrote to his wife that he had been very anxious to
go to Kolobeng and see with his own eyes the destruction wrought by the
savages. He had a great longing, too, to visit once more the grave of
Elizabeth, their infant daughter, but he heard that the Boers were in
the neighborhood, and were anxious to catch him, and he thought it best
not to go. Two years before, he had been at Linyanti with Mr. Oswell.
Many details of the new journey are given in the _Missionary Travels_,