from a large number of missionaries and other Christian friends,
who had gathered to meet them. Making a brief stay they embarked in the
mail steamer _Roman_ and landed at Cape Town on the 2nd of June. Here
they were entertained by the Christian community at a public breakfast.
A few days later they embarked in the steamship _Norseman, en route_ for
England.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X.

CLOSING SCENES.

In the Chronicle of the London Missionary Society for March, 1870, the
following notice appeared: "Our readers will be glad to hear that there
is now a definite prospect of welcoming again to England our veteran
missionary, the Rev. Robert Moffat. He may be expected, with Mrs.
Moffat, about the month of June. Mr. Moffat no longer enjoys his former
robust health. In his last letter he writes: 'What to me was formerly a
molehill is now a mountain, and we both have for some time past begun to
feel some of the labour and sorrow so frequently experienced by those
who have passed their three-score years and ten.'"

The _Norseman_ reached Plymouth on the 24th of July, and next day Robert
and Mary Moffat landed at Southampton, thus returning to their native
land, to leave it no more, after an absence of over fifty years; during
which time they had visited it only once before.

On the 1st of August he was welcomed by the Society, at an influential
meeting, convened for the purpose, in the Board Room of the Mission
House, in Blomfield Street. At that meeting, alluding to his previous
visit in 1839, and to the printing of the New Testament in Sechwana, he
stated as follows:--

"When I came to the Cape, previous to my first visit, I brought a
translation of the New Testament, which I had translated under
considerable difficulties, being engaged a portion of the day in roofing
an immense church, and the remainder in exegetical examinations and
consulting concordances. I was anxious to get it printed, and I brought
it down to the Cape, but there I could find no printing-office that
would undertake it. The Committee of the Bible Society very kindly--as
they have always been to me, I say it with pleasure--forwarded paper and
ink to the Cape expecting I should get the work done there. As I said,
there was not a printing-office that would undertake it. Dining with Sir
George Napier, the Governor, I informed him of the difficulty. He said,
'Jump on board a ship with your translation and get it printed in
England, and you w