My Precedence Of All Traders In The Line Of Discovery
Put Me Often In The Way Of Very Handsome Offers,
But I always advised
the donors to sell their ivory to traders, who would be sure to follow,
and when
At some future time they had become rich by barter,
they might remember me or my children. When Lake Ngami was discovered
I might have refused permission to a trader who accompanied us;
but when he applied for leave to form part of our company,
knowing that Mr. Oswell would no more trade than myself,
and that the people of the lake would be disappointed
if they could not dispose of their ivory, I willingly granted a sanction,
without which his people would not at that time have ventured so far.
This was surely preferring the interest of another to my own.
The return I got for this was a notice in one of the Cape papers
that this "man was the true discoverer of the lake!"
The conclusion I had come to was, that it is quite lawful,
though perhaps not expedient, for missionaries to trade; but barter
is the only means by which a missionary in the interior can pay his way,
as money has no value. In all the journeys I had previously undertaken
for wider diffusion of the Gospel, the extra expenses were defrayed
from my salary of 100 Pounds per annum. This sum is sufficient
to enable a missionary to live in the interior of South Africa,
supposing he has a garden capable of yielding corn and vegetables;
but should he not, and still consider that six or eight months
can not lawfully be spent simply in getting goods at a lower price
than they can be had from itinerant traders, the sum mentioned
is barely sufficient for the poorest fare and plainest apparel.
As we never felt ourselves justified in making journeys to the colony
for the sake of securing bargains, the most frugal living was necessary
to enable us to be a little charitable to others; but when to this were added
extra traveling expenses, the wants of an increasing family,
and liberal gifts to chiefs, it was difficult to make both ends meet.
The pleasure of missionary labor would be enhanced if one could devote
his life to the heathen, without drawing a salary from a society at all.
The luxury of doing good from one's own private resources,
without appearing to either natives or Europeans to be making a gain of it,
is far preferable, and an object worthy the ambition of the rich.
But few men of fortune, however, now devote themselves to Christian missions,
as of old.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 299 of 1070
Words from 85842 to 86289
of 306638
