Our Services Having Necessarily Been
All In The Open Air, Where It Is Most Difficult To Address
Large Bodies Of People, Prevented My Recovering So Entirely
From The Effects Of Clergyman's Sore Throat As I Expected,
When My Uvula Was Excised At The Cape.
To give an idea of the routine followed for months together, on other days
as well as on Sundays,
I may advert to my habit of treating the sick
for complaints which seemed to surmount the skill of their own doctors.
I refrained from going to any one unless his own doctor wished it,
or had given up the case. This led to my having a selection
of the severer cases only, and prevented the doctors being offended
at my taking their practice out of their hands. When attacked
by fever myself, and wishing to ascertain what their practices were,
I could safely intrust myself in their hands on account of their well-known
friendly feelings.
The plan of showing kindness to the natives in their bodily ailments
secures their friendship; this is not the case to the same degree
in old missions, where the people have learned to look upon relief
as a right - a state of things which sometimes happens among ourselves
at home. Medical aid is therefore most valuable in young missions,
though at all stages it is an extremely valuable adjunct to other operations.
I proposed to teach the Makololo to read, but, for the reasons mentioned,
Sekeletu at first declined; after some weeks, however,
Motibe, his father-in-law, and some others, determined to brave
the mysterious book. To all who have not acquired it,
the knowledge of letters is quite unfathomable; there is naught like it
within the compass of their observation; and we have no comparison
with any thing except pictures, to aid them in comprehending
the idea of signs of words. It seems to them supernatural
that we see in a book things taking place, or having occurred at a distance.
No amount of explanation conveys the idea unless they learn to read.
Machinery is equally inexplicable, and money nearly as much so
until they see it in actual use. They are familiar with barter alone;
and in the centre of the country, where gold is totally unknown,
if a button and sovereign were left to their choice,
they would prefer the former on account of its having an eye.
In beginning to learn, Motibe seemed to himself in the position of the doctor,
who was obliged to drink his potion before the patient, to show that
it contained nothing detrimental; after he had mastered the alphabet,
and reported the thing so far safe, Sekeletu and his young companions
came forward to try for themselves. He must have resolved
to watch the effects of the book against his views on polygamy,
and abstain whenever he perceived any tendency, in reading it,
toward enforcing him to put his wives away. A number of men
learned the alphabet in a short time and were set to teach others,
but before much progress could be made I was on my way to Loanda.
As I had declined to name any thing as a present from Sekeletu,
except a canoe to take me up the river, he brought ten fine elephants' tusks
and laid them down beside my wagon. He would take no denial,
though I told him I should prefer to see him trading with Fleming,
a man of color from the West Indies, who had come for the purpose.
I had, during the eleven years of my previous course, invariably abstained
from taking presents of ivory, from an idea that a religious instructor
degraded himself by accepting gifts from those whose spiritual welfare
he professed to seek. 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.
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