It was not till the 8th of June that he left the Cape. His wagon was loaded to double the usual weight from his good nature in taking everybody's packages. His oxen were lean, and he was too poor to provide better. He reached Griqua Town on the 15th August, and Kuruman a fortnight later. Many things had occasioned unexpected delay, and the last crowning detention was caused by the breaking down of a wheel. It turned out, however, that these delays were probably the means of saving his life. Had they not occurred he would have reached Kolobeng in August. But this was the very time when the commando of the Boers, numbering 600 colonists and many natives besides, were busy with the work of death and destruction. Had he been at Kolobeng, Pretorius would probably have executed his threat of killing him; at the least he would have been deprived of all the property that he carried with him, and his projected enterprise would have been brought to an end.
In a letter to his wife, Livingstone gives full details of the horrible outrage perpetrated shortly before by the Boers at Kolobeng:
"Kuruman, 20th September, 1852.--Along with this I send you a long letter; this I write in order to give you the latest news. The Boers gutted our house at Kolobeng; they brought four wagons down and took away sofa, table, bed, all the crockery, your desk (I hope it had nothing in it--Have you the letters?), smashed the wooden chairs, took away the iron ones, tore out the leaves of all the books, and scattered them in front of the house, smashed the bottles containing medicines, windows, oven-door, took away the smith-bellows, anvil, all the tools,--in fact everything worth taking; three corn-mills, a bag of coffee, for which I paid six pounds, and lots of coffee, tea, and sugar, which the gentlemen who went to the north left; took all our cattle and Paul's and Mebalwe's. They then went up to Limaüe, went to church morning and afternoon, and heard Mebalwe preach! After the second service they told Sechéle that they had come to fight, because he allowed Englishmen to proceed to the North, though they had repeatedly ordered him not to do so. He replied that he was a man of peace, that he could not molest Englishmen, because they had never done him any harm, and always treated him well. In the morning they commenced firing on the town with swivels, and set fire to it. The heat forced some of the women to flee, the men to huddle together on the small hill in the middle of the town; the smoke prevented them seeing the Boers, and the cannon killed many, sixty (60) Bakwains. The Boers then came near to kill and destroy them all, but the Bakwains killed thirty-five (35), and many horses. They fought the whole day, but the Boers could not dislodge them. They stopped firing in the evening, and then the Bakwains retired on account of having no water. The above sixty are not all men; women and children are among the slain. The Boers were 600, and they had 700 natives with them. All the corn is burned. Parties went out and burned Bangwaketse town, and swept off all the cattle. Sebubi's cattle are all gone. All the Bakhatla cattle gone. Neither Bangwaketse nor Bakhatla fired a shot. All the corn burned of the whole three tribes. Everything edible is taken from them. How will they live! They told Sechéle that the Queen had given off the land to them, and henceforth they were the masters,--had abolished chieftainship. Sir Harry Smith tried the same, and England has paid two millions of money to catch one chief, and he is still as free as the winds of heaven. How will it end? I don't know, but I will tell you the beginning. There are two parties of Boers gone to the Lake. These will to a dead certainty be cut off. They amount to thirty-six men. Parties are sent now in pursuit of them. The Bakwains will plunder and murder the Boers without mercy, and by and by the Boers will ask the English Government to assist them to put down rebellion, and of this rebellion I shall have, of course, to bear the blame. They often expressed a wish to get hold of me. I wait here a little in order to get information when the path is clear. Kind Providence detained me from falling into the very thick of it. God will preserve me still. He has work for me or He would have allowed me to go in just when the Boers were there. We shall remove more easily now that we are lightened of our furniture. They have taken away our sofa. I never had a good rest on it. We had only got it ready when we left. Well, they can't have taken away all the stones. We shall have a seat in spite of them, and that, too, with a merry heart which doeth good like a medicine. I wonder what the Peace Society would do with these worthies. They are Christians. The Dutch predicants baptise all their children, and admit them to the Lord's Supper...."
Dr. Livingstone was not disposed to restrain his indignation and grief over his losses. For one so patient and good, he had a very large vial of indignation, and on occasion poured it out right heartily over all injustice and cruelty. On no heads was it ever discharged more freely than on these Transvaal Boers. He made a formal representation of his losses both to the Cape and Home authorities, but never received a farthing of compensation. The subsequent history of the Transvaal Republic will convince many that Livingstone was not far from the truth in his estimate of the character of the free and independent Boers.
But while perfectly sincere in his indignation over the treatment of the natives and his own losses, his playful fancy could find a ludicrous side for what concerned himself, and grim enjoyment in showing it to his friends. "Think," he writes to his friend Watt, "think of a big fat Boeress drinking coffee out of my kettle, and then throwing her tallowy corporeity on my sofa, or keeping her needles in my wife's writing-desk! Ugh! and then think of foolish John Bull paying so many thousands a year for the suppression of the slave-trade, and allowing Commissioner Aven to make treaties with Boers who carry on the slave-trade.... The Boers are mad with rage against me because my people fought bravely. It was I, they think, who taught them to shoot Boers. Fancy your reverend friend teaching the young idea how to shoot Boers, and praying for a blessing on the work of his hands!"
In the same spirit he writes to his friend Moore:
"I never knew I was so rich until I recounted up the different articles that were taken away. They cannot be replaced in this country under £300. Many things brought to our establishment by my better-half were of considerable value. Of all I am now lightened, and they want to ease me of my head.... The Boers kill the blacks without compunction, and without provocation, because they believe they have no souls.... Viewing the dispensation apart from the extreme wickedness of the Boers, it seemed a judgment on the blacks for their rejection of the gospel. They have verily done despite unto the Spirit of grace.... Their enmity was not manifested to us, but to the gospel. I am grieved for them, and still hope that the good seed will yet vegetate [36]."
[36] This letter to Mr. Moore contains a trait of Livingstone, very trifling in the occasion out of which it arose, but showing vividly the nature of the man. He had promised to send Mr. Moore's little son some curiosities, but had forgotten when his family went to England. Being reminded of his promise in a postscript the little fellow had added to a letter from his father, Livingstone is "overwhelmed with shame and confusion of face." He feels he has disappointed the boy and forgotten his promise. Again and again Livingstone returns to the subject, and feels assured that his young friend would forgive him if he knew how much he suffered for his fault. That in the midst of his own overwhelming troubles he should feel so much for the disappointment of a little heart in England, shows how terrible a thing it was to him to cause needless pain, and how profoundly it distressed him to seem forgetful of a promise. Years afterward he wrote that he had brought an elephant's tail for Henry, but one of the men stole all the hairs and sold them. He had still a tusk of a hippopotamus for him, and a tooth for his brother, but he had brought no curiosities, for he could scarcely get along himself.
But while he could relax playfully at the thought of the desolation at Kolobeng, he knew how to make it the occasion likewise of high resolves. The Boers, as he wrote the Directors, were resolved to shut up the interior. He was determined, with God's help, to open the country. Time would show which would be most successful in resolution,--they or he. To his brother-in-law he wrote that he would open a path through the country, or perish.
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.