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