Livingstone had hardly had time to forget his building troubles at Mabotsa and Chonuane, when he began this new enterprise. But he was in much better spirits, much more hopeful than he had been. Writing to Mr. Watt on 13th February, 1848, he says:--
"All our meetings are good compared to those we had at Mabotsa, and some of them admit of no comparison whatever. Ever since we moved, we have been incessantly engaged in manual labor. We have endeavored, as far as possible, to carry on systematic instruction at the same time, but have felt it very hard pressure on our energies.... Our daily labors are in the following sort of order:
"We get up as soon as we can, generally with the sun in summer, then have family worship, breakfast, and school; and as soon as these are over we begin the manual operations needed, sowing, ploughing, smithy work, and every other sort of work by turns as required. My better-half is employed all the morning in culinary or other work; and feeling pretty well tired by dinner-time, we take about two hours' rest then; but more frequently, without the respite I try to secure for myself, she goes off to hold infant-school, and this, I am happy to say, is very popular with the youngsters. She sometimes has eighty, but the average may be sixty. My manual labors are continued till about five o'clock. I then go into the town to give lessons and talk to any one who may be disposed for it. As soon as the cows are milked we have a meeting, and this is followed by a prayer-meeting in Sechéles house, which brings me home about half-past eight, and generally tired enough, too fatigued to think of any mental exertion. I do not enumerate these duties by way of telling how much we do, but to let you know a cause of sorrow I have that so little of my time is devoted to real missionary work."
First there was a temporary house to be built, then a permanent one, and Livingstone was not exempted from the casualties of mechanics. Once he found himself dangling from a beam by his weak arm. Another time he had a fall from the roof. A third time he cut himself severely with an axe. Working on the roof in the sun, his lips got all scabbed and broken. If he mentions such things to Dr. Bennett or other friend, it is either in the way of illustrating some medical point or to explain how he had never found time to take the latitude of his station till he was stopped working by one of these accidents. At best it was weary work. "Two days ago," he writes to his sister Janet (5th July, 1848), "we entered our new house. What a mercy to be in a house again! A year in a little hut through which the wind blew our candles into glorious icicles (as a poet would say) by night, and in which crowds of flies continually settled on the eyes of our poor little brats by day, makes us value our present castle. Oh, Janet, know thou, if thou art given to building castles in the air, that that is easy work to erecting cottages on the ground." He could not quite forget that it was unfair treatment that had driven him from Mabotsa, and involved him in these labors. "I often think," he writes to Dr. Bennett, "I have forgiven, as I hope to be forgiven; but the remembrance of slander often comes boiling up, although I hate to think of it. You must remember me in your prayers, that more of the spirit of Christ may be imparted to me. All my plans of mental culture have been broken through by manual labor. I shall soon, however, be obliged to give my son and daughter a jog along the path to learning.... Your family increases, very fast, and I fear we follow in your wake. I cannot realize the idea of your sitting with four around you, and I can scarcely believe myself to be so far advanced as to be the father of two."
Livingstone never expected the work of real Christianity to advance rapidly among the Bakwains. They were a slow people and took long to move. But it was not his desire to have a large church of nominal adherents. "Nothing," he writes, "will induce me to form an impure church. Fifty added to the church sounds fine at home, but if only five of these are genuine, what will it profit in the Great Day? I have felt more than ever lately that the great object of our exertions ought to be conversion." There was no subject on which Livingstone had stronger feelings than on purity of communion. For two whole years he allowed no dispensation of the Lord's Supper, because he did not deem the professing Christians to be living consistently. Here was a crowning proof of his hatred of all sham and false pretense, and his intense love of solid, thorough, finished work.
Hardly were things begun to be settled at Kolobeng, when, by way of relaxation, Livingstone (January, 1848) again moved eastward. He would have gone sooner, but "a mad sort of Scotchman [26]," having wandered past them shooting elephants, and lost all his cattle by the bite of the tsetse-fly, Livingstone had to go to his help; and moreover the dam, having burst, required to be repaired. Sechéle set out to accompany him, and intended to go with him the whole way; but some friends having come to visit his tribe, he had to return, or at least did return, leaving Livingstone four gallons of porridge, and two servants to act in his stead. "He is about the only individual," says Livingstone, "who possesses distinct, consistent views on the subject of our mission. He is bound by his wives: has a curious idea--would like to go to another country for three or four years in order to study, with the hope that probably his wives would have married others in the meantime. He would then return, and be admitted to the Lord's Supper, and teach his people the knowledge he has acquired, He seems incapable of putting them away. He feels so attached to them, and indeed we, too, feel much attached to most of them. They are our best scholars, our constant friends. We earnestly pray that they, too, may be enlightened by the Spirit of God."
[26] Mr. Gordon Cumming.
The prayer regarding Sechéle was answered soon. Reviewing the year 1844 in a letter to the Directors, Livingstone says: "An event that excited more open enmity than any other was the profession of faith and subsequent reception of the chief into the church."
During the first years at Kolobeng he received a long letter from his younger brother Charles, then in the United States, requesting him to use his influence with the London Missionary Society that he might be sent as a missionary to China. In writing to the Directors about his brother, in reply to this request, Livingstone disclaimed all idea of influencing them except in so far as he might be able to tell them facts. His brother's history was very interesting. In 1839, when David Livingstone was in England, Charles became earnest about religion, influenced partly by the thought that as his brother, to whom he was most warmly attached, was going abroad, he might never see him again in this world, and therefore he would prepare to meet him in the next. A strong desire sprang up in his mind to obtain a liberal education. Not having the means to get this at home, he was advised by David to go to America, and endeavor to obtain admission to one of the colleges there where the students support themselves by manual labor. To help him in this, David sent him five pounds, which he had just received from the Society, being the whole of his quarter's allowance in London. On landing at New York, after selling his box and bed, Charles found his whole stock of cash to amount to £2, 13s. 6d. Purchasing a loaf and a piece of cheese as viaticum, he started for a college at Oberlin, seven hundred miles off, where Dr. Finney was President. He contrived to get to the college without having ever begged. In the third year he entered on a theological course, with the view of becoming a missionary. He did not wish, and could never agree, as a missionary, to hold an appointment from an American Society, on account of the relation of the American Churches to slavery; therefore he applied to the London Missionary Society. David had suggested to his father that if Charles was to be a missionary, he ought to direct his attention to China. Livingstone's first missionary love had not become cold, and much though he might have wished to have his brother in Africa, he acted consistently on his old conviction that there were enough of English missionaries there, and that China had much more need.
The Directors declined to appoint Charles Livingstone without a personal visit, which he could not afford to make. This circumstance led him to accept a pastorate in New England, where he remained until 1857, when he came to this country and joined his brother in the Zambesi Expedition. Afterward he was appointed H.M. Consul at Fernando Po, but being always delicate, he succumbed to the climate of the country, and died a few months after his brother, on his way home, in October, 1873. Sir Bartle Frere, as President of the Royal Geographical Society, paid a deserved tribute to his affectionate and earnest nature, his consistent Christian life, and his valuable help to Christian missions and the African cause generally [27].
[27] Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1874, p. cxxviii.