In the beginning of 1849 Livingstone made the first of a series of journeys to the north, in the hope of planting native missionaries among the people. Not to interrupt the continuous account of these journeys, we may advert here to a visit paid to him at Kolobeng, on his return from the first of them, in the end of the year, by Mr. Freeman of the London Missionary Society, who was at that time visiting the African stations. Mr. Freeman, to Livingstone's regret, was in favor of keeping up all Colonial stations, because the London Society alone paid attention to the black population. He was not much in sympathy with Livingstone.
"Mr. Freeman," he writes confidentially to Mr. Watt, "gave us no hope to expect any new field to be taken up. 'Expenditure to be reduced in Africa' was the word, when I proposed the new region beyond us, and there is nobody willing to go except Mr. Moffat and myself. Six hundred miles additional land-carriage, mosquitoes in myriads, sparrows by the million, an epidemic frequently fatal, don't look well in a picture. I am 270 miles from Kuruman; land-carriage for all that we use makes a fearful inroad into the £100 of salary, and then 600 miles beyond this makes one think unutterable things, for nobody likes to call for more salary. I think the Indian salary ought to be given to those who go into the tropics. I have a very strong desire to go and reduce the new language to writing, but I cannot perform impossibilities. I don't think it quite fair for the Churches to expect their messenger to live, as if he were the Prodigal Son, on the husks that the swine do eat, but I should be ashamed to say so to any one but yourself."
"I cannot perform impossibilities," said Livingstone; but few men could come so near doing it. His activity of mind and body at this outskirt of civilization was wonderful. A Jack-of-all-trades, he is building houses and schools, cultivating gardens, scheming in every manner of way how to get water, which in the remarkable drought of the season becomes scarcer and scarcer; as a missionary he is holding meetings every other night, preaching on Sundays, and taking such other opportunities as he can find to gain the people to Christ; as a medical man he is dealing with the more difficult cases of disease, those which baffle the native doctors; as a man of science he is taking observations, collecting specimens, thinking out geographical, geological, meteorological, and other problems bearing on the structure and condition of the continent; as a missionary statesman he is planning how the actual force might be disposed of to most advantage, and is looking round in this direction and in that, over hundreds of miles, for openings for native agents; and to promote these objects he is writing long letters to the Directors, to the Missionary Chronicle to the British Banner, to private friends, to any one likely to take an interest in his plans.
But this does not exhaust his labors. He is deeply interested in philological studies, and is writing on the Sichuana language:
"I have been hatching a grammar of the Sichuana language," he writes to Mr. Watt. "It is different in structure from any other language, except the ancient Egyptian. Most of the changes are effected by means of prefixes or affixes, the radical remaining unchanged. Attempts have been made to form grammars, but all have gone on the principle of establishing a resemblance between Sichuana, Latin, and Greek; mine is on the principle of analysing the language without reference to any others. Grammatical terms are only used when I cannot express my meaning in any other way. The analysis renders the whole language very simple, and I believe the principle elicited extends to most of the languages between this and Egypt. I wish to know whether I could get 20 or 30 copies printed for private distribution at an expense not beyond my means. It would be a mere tract, and about the size of this letter when folded, 40 or 50 pages perhaps [28]. Will you ascertain the cost, and tell me whether, in the event of my continuing hot on the subject half a year hence, you would be the corrector of the press?... Will you examine catalogues to find whether there is any dictionary of ancient Egyptian within my means, so that I might purchase and compare? I should not grudge two or three pounds for it. Professor Vater has written on it, but I do not know what dictionary he consulted. One Tattam has written a Coptic grammar; perhaps that has a vocabulary, and might serve my purpose. I see Tattam advertised by John Russell Smith, 4 Old Compton Street, Soho, London,--'Tattam (H.), Lexicon Egyptiaco-Latinum e veteribus linguae Egyptiacae monumentis; thick 8vo, bds., 10s., Oxf., 1835.' Will you purchase the above for me?"
[28] This gives a correct idea of the length of many of his letters.
At Mabotsa and Chonuane the Livingstones had spent but a little time; Kolobeng may be said to have been the only permanent home they ever had. During these years several of their children were born, and it was the only considerable period of their lives when both had their children about them. Looking back afterward on this period, and its manifold occupations, whilst detained in Manyuema, in the year 1870, Dr. Livingstone wrote the following striking words:
#/ "I often ponder over my missionary career among the Bakwains or Bakwaina, and though conscious of many imperfections, not a single pang of regret arises in the view of my conduct, except that I did not feel it to be my duty, while spending all my energy in teaching the heathen, to devote a special portion of my time to play with my children. But generally I was so much exhausted with the mental and manual labor of the day, that in the evening there was no fun left in me. I did not play with my little ones while I had them, and they soon sprung up in my absences, and left me conscious that I had none to play with." #/
The heart that felt this one regret in looking back to this busy time must have been true indeed to the instincts of a parent. But Livingstone's case was no exception to that mysterious law of our life in this world, by which, in so many things, we learn how to correct our errors only after the opportunity is gone. Of all the crooks in his lot, that which gave him so short an opportunity of securing the affections and moulding the character of his children seems to have been the hardest to bear. His long detention at Manyuema appears, as we shall see hereafter, to have been spent by him in learning more completely the lesson of submission to the will of God; and the hard trial of separation from his family, entailing on them what seemed irreparable loss, was among the last of his sorrows over which he was able to write the words with which he closes the account of his wife's death in the Zambesi and its Tributaries,--"FIAT, DOMINE, VOLUNTUS TUA!"