As for the contest with the Boers, we may smile at their impotent wrath. It is a singular fact, that while Sechéle 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_, which it is unnecessary to repeat, It may be enough to state that he found the country flooded, and that on the way it was no unusual thing for him to be wet all day, and to walk through swamps, and water three or four feet deep. Trees, thorns, and reeds offered tremendous resistance, and he and his people must have presented a pitiable sight when forcing their way through reeds with cutting edges. "With our own hands all raw and bloody, and knees through our trousers, we at length emerged." It was a happy thought to tear his pocket-handkerchief into two parts and tie them over his knees. "I remember," he says in his Journal, referring to last year's journey, "the toil which our friend Oswell endured on our account. He never spared himself." It is not to be supposed that his guides were happy in such a march; it required his tact stretched to its very utmost to prevent them from turning back. "At the Malopo," he writes to his wife, "there were other dangers besides. When walking before the wagon in the morning twilight, I observed a lioness about fifty yards from me, in the squatting way they walk when going to spring. She was followed by a very large lion, but seeing the wagon, she turned back." Though he escaped fever at first, he had repeated attacks afterward, and had to be constantly using remedies against it. The unhealthiness of the region to Europeans forced itself painfully on his attention, and made him wonder in what way God would bring the light of the gospel to the poor inhabitants. As a physician his mind was much occupied with the nature of the disease, and the way to cure it. If only he could discover a remedy for that scourge of Africa, what an invaluable boon would he confer on its much-afflicted people!
"I would like," he says in his Journal, "to devote a portion of my life to the discovery of a remedy for that terrible disease, the African fever[37]. I would go into the parts where it prevails most, and try to discover if the natives have a remedy for it. I must make many inquiries of the river people in this quarter. What an unspeakable mercy it is to be permitted to engage in this most holy and honorable work! What an infinity of lots in the world are poor, miserable, and degraded compared with mine! I might have been a common soldier, a day-laborer, a factory operative, a mechanic, instead of a missionary. If my faculties had been left to run riot or to waste as those of so many young men, I should now have been used up, a dotard, as many of my school-fellows are. I am respected by the natives, their kind expressions often make me ashamed, and they are sincere. So much deference and favor manifested without any effort on my part to secure it comes from the Author of every good gift. I acknowledge the mercies of the great God with devout and reverential gratitude."