begin, but to carry out their
plans, and that no material depression will ever again be permitted, nor
appearance of spasmodic benevolence recur. While I hope to continue the
same cordial co-operation and friendship which have always characterized
our intercourse, various reasons induce me to withdraw from pecuniary
dependence on any society. I have done something for the heathen, but
for an aged mother, who has still more sacred claims than they, I have
been able to do nothing, and a continuance of the connection would be
a perpetuation of my inability to make any provision for her declining
years. In addition to "clergyman's sore throat", which partially
disabled me from the work, my father's death imposed new obligations;
and a fresh source of income having been opened to me without my asking,
I had no hesitation in accepting what would enable me to fulfill my duty
to my aged parent as well as to the heathen.

If the reader remembers the way in which I was led, while teaching the
Bakwains, to commence exploration, he will, I think, recognize the
hand of Providence. Anterior to that, when Mr. Moffat began to give
the Bible--the Magna Charta of all the rights and privileges of modern
civilization--to the Bechuanas, Sebituane went north, and spread the
language into which he was translating the sacred oracles in a new
region larger than France. Sebituane, at the same time, rooted out
hordes of bloody savages, among whom no white man could have gone
without leaving his skull to ornament some village. He opened up the
way for me--let us hope also for the Bible. Then, again, while I
was laboring at Kolobeng, seeing only a small arc of the cycle of
Providence, I could not understand it, and felt inclined to ascribe our
successive and prolonged droughts to the wicked one. But when forced by
these and the Boers to become explorer, and open a new country in the
north rather than set my face southward, where missionaries are not
needed, the gracious Spirit of God influenced the minds of the heathen
to regard me with favor; the Divine hand is again perceived. Then I
turned away westward rather than in the opposite direction, chiefly from
observing that some native Portuguese, though influenced by the hope of
a reward from their government to cross the continent, had been obliged
to return from the east without accomplishing their object. Had I
gone at first in the eastern direction, which the course of the great
Leeambye seemed