"Don't know what apology to make you for a delay I could not shorten. But as you are a mercifully kind-hearted dame, I expect you will write out an apology in proper form, and I shall read it before you with as long a face as I can exhibit. Disease was the chief obstacle. The repair of the wagon was the 'source of attraction' in Cape Town, and the settlement of a case of libel another 'source of attraction.' They tried to engulf me in a law-suit for simply asking the postmaster why some letters were charged double. They were so marked in my account. I had to pay £13 to quash it. They longed to hook me in, from mere hatred to London missionaries. I did not remain an hour after I could move. But I do not wonder at your anxiety for my speedy return. I am sorry you have been disappointed, but you know no mortal can control disease. The Makololo are wonderfully well pleased with the path we have already made, and if I am successful in going down to Quilimane, that will be still better. I have written you by every opportunity, and am very sorry your letters have been miscarried."
To his father-in-law he expresses his warm gratitude for the stores. It was feared by the natives that the goods were bewitched, so they were placed on an island, a hut was built over them, and there Livingstone found them on his arrival, a year after! A letter of twelve quarto pages to Mr. Moffat gives his impressions of his journey, while another of sixteen pages to Mrs. Moffat explains his "plans," about which she had asked more full information. He quiets her fears by his favorite texts for the present--"Commit thy way to the Lord," and "Lo, I am with you alway"; and his favorite vision of the future--the earth full of the knowledge of the Lord. He is somewhat cutting at the expense of so-called "missionaries to the heathen, who never march into real heathen territory, and quiet their consciences by opposing their do-nothingism to my blundering do-somethingism!" He is indignant at the charge made by some of his enemies that no good was done among the Bakwains. They were, in many respects, a different people from before. Any one who should be among the Makololo as he had been, would be thankful for the state of the Bakwains. The seed would always bear fruit, but the husbandman had need of great patience, and the end was sure.
Sekelétu had not been behaving well in Livingstone's absence. He had been conducting marauding parties against his neighbors, which even Livingstone's men, when they heard of it, pronounced to be "bad, bad." Livingstone was obliged to reprove him. A new uniform had been sent to the chief from Loanda, with which he appeared at church, "attracting more attention than the sermon." He continued, however, to 'show the same friendship for Livingstone, and did all he could for him when he set out eastward. A new escort of men was provided, above a hundred and twenty strong, with ten slaughter cattle, and three of his best riding oxen; stores of food were given, and a right to levy tribute over the tribes that were subject to Sekelétu as he passed through their borders. If Livingstone had performed these journeys with some long-pursed society or individual at his back, his feat even then would have been wonderful; but it becomes quite amazing when we think that he went without stores, and owed everything to the influence he acquired with men like Sekelétu and the natives generally. His heart was much touched on one occasion by the disinterested kindness of Sekelétu. Having lost their way on a dark night in the forest, in a storm of rain and lightning, and the luggage having been carried on, they had to pass the night under a tree. The chief's blanket had not been carried on, and Sekelétu placed Livingstone under it, and lay down himself on the wet ground. "If such men must perish before the white by an immutable law of heaven," he wrote to the Geographical Society (25th January, 1856), "we must seem to be under the same sort of terrible necessity in our Caffre wars as the American Professor of Chemistry said he was under, when he dismembered the man whom he had murdered."