A letter to his father and other relations at Hamilton, 30th September, 1853, is of a somewhat apologetic and explanatory cast. Some of the friends had the notion that he should have settled somewhere, "preaching the simple gospel," and converting people by every sermon:
"You see what they make of the gospel, and my conversation on it, in which my inmost Heart yearned for their conversion. Many now think Jesus and Sebituane very much the same sort of person. I was prevented by fever and other matters from at once following up the glorious object of this journey: viz., while preaching the gospel beyond every other man's line of things made ready to our hands, to discover a healthy location for a mission, and I determined to improve the time by teaching to read. This produced profound deliberation and lengthened palavers, and at length the chief told me that he feared learning to read would change his heart and make him content with one wife like Sechéle. He has four. It was in vain I urged that the change contemplated made the affair as voluntary as if he would now change his mind from four to thirty, as his father had. He could not realize the change that would give relish to any other system than the present. He felt as the man who is mentioned by Serles as saying he would not like to go to heaven to be employed for ever singing and praising on a bare cloud without anything to eat or drink....
"The conversion of a few, however valuable their souls may be, cannot be put into the scale against the knowledge of the truth spread over the whole country. In this I do and will exult. As in India, we are doomed to perpetual disappointment; but the knowledge of Christ spreads over the masses. We are like voices crying in the wilderness. We prepare the way for a glorious future in which missionaries telling the same tale of love will convert by every sermon. I am trying now to establish the Lord's kingdom in a region wider by far than Scotland. Fever seems to forbid; but I shall work for the glory of Christ's kingdom--fever or no fever. All the intelligent men who direct our society and understand the nature of my movements support me warmly. A few, I understand, in Africa, in writing home, have styled my efforts as 'wanderings.' The very word contains a lie coiled like a serpent in its bosom. It means traveling without an object, or uselessly. I am now performing the duty of writing you. If this were termed 'dawdling,' it would be as true as the other.... I have actually seen letters to the Directors in which I am gravely charged with holding the views of the Plymouth Brethren, So very sure am I that I am in the path which God's Providence has pointed out, as that by which Christ's kingdom is to be promoted, that if the Society should object, I would consider it my duty to withdraw from it....
_"P.S._--My throat became well during the long silence of traveling across the desert. It plagues again now that I am preaching in a moist climate."
Dr. Livingstone now began his preparations for the journey from Linyanti to Loanda. Sekelétu was kind and generous. The road was impracticable for wagons, and the native trader, George Fleming, returned to Kuruman, The Kuruman guides had not done well, so that Livingstone resolved to send them back, and to get Makololo men instead. Here is the record of his last Sunday at Linyanti:
"_6th Nov., 1853_.--Large audience. Kuruman people don't attend. If it is a fashion to be church-going, many are drawn into its observance. But placed in other circumstances, the true character comes out. This is the case with many Scotchmen. May God so imbue my mind with the spirit of Christianity that in all circumstances I may show my Christian character! Had a long conversation with Motlube, chiefly on a charm for defending the town or for gun medicine. They think I know it but will not impart the secret to them. I used every form of expression to undeceive him, but to little purpose. Their belief in medicine which will enable them to shoot well is very strong, and simple trust in an unseen Saviour to defend them against such enemies as the Matebele is too simple for them. I asked if a little charcoal sewed up in a bag were a more feasible protector than He who made all things, and told them that one day they would laugh heartily at their own follies in bothering me so much for gun medicine. A man who has never had to do with a raw heathen tribe has yet to learn the Missionary A B C."