Mary Moffat Visits Chonwane
For some years after the return from England the work went on with but little interrui)tion. The station had become the centre of a large area of activity. Besides Edwards, Inglis, and Livingstone northwards, and Ross at Taung, Helmore was at Lekatlong, in the neighbourhood of what are now the Diamond Fields. To all these Kuruman was the mother station, from which were drawn supplies of books and of many other useful things. The venerable Hamilton, who had seen the commencement of the Bechwana Mission in 1816, was still able to render some aid, where all were workers. The Moffats and Ashtons were fully employed, both husbands and wives. Moffat’s chief work was translation, and in this Ashton was able to render him much critical assistance, besides relieving him almost entirely of the duties of the printing office. But these represented only a small part of the labours, manual and mental, which filled up the day’s work. The missionaries were surrounded by a people just struggling into light out of darkness, dimly grasping the value of civilization, but needing much help and guidance. The native converts were willing enough to assist, but had themselves to be taught how to do so. There were the usual disappointments to which all missionaries at home and abroad are accustomed. Again and again was the stone brought with labour near the top of the hill, only to roll down again to the bottom; and the toil had to be begun over again. When encouragement came it was thankfully received; but in their prosperous times the Moffats never forgot what years of effort and suffering had first been necessary.
Besides direct mission work there was much to be done of a
subsidiary character. Dwelling-houses had to be enlarged and new schoolrooms built. The natives were now advanced enough to give good help, but the chief workmen were still the missionaries themselves. There was no allowance for the payment of artizans, and they must put their own hands to the work. What necessary cost was involved in the new schoolrooms was met by the opening of a kind of amateur shop by the missionaries’ wives, in which was sold a quantity of clothing which had been given for the purposes of the mission by working a<=sociations in England. No doubt this supplied another shaft to those who were always ready to say that missionaries were only traders in disguise. There was no disguise about it — the trade was there, but its object was no private gain, but to make the resources placed in the hands of the missionaries go as far as possible towards the furtherance of the gospel.
In the year 1845 Robert Moffat had a merciful deliverance from what might have been a great calamity. He had just set up a new corn-mill, and whilst seeing to its being properly started unwarily stretched his arm over two cog-wheels. In a moment the shirt-sleeve, and with it the arm, was drawn in. Happily the mill was stopped in time, but an immense gaping wound, sir inches in length, with torn edges, was the result; and for many weeks the strong man was laid aside. It pleased God to give such a recovery as might at one time have seemed well-nigh impossible.
The public services were, of course, in the Sechwana language. Once a week the missionary families met for an English devotional meeting. It was also a sort of custom that as the sun went down there should be a short truce from work every evening. A certain eminence at the back of the station became, by common consent, the meeting-place. There the missionary fathers of the hamlet would be found, each sitting on his accustomed stone. Before them lay the broad valley, once a reedy morass, now reclaimed and partitioned out into garden lands: its margin fringed with long water-courses, overhung with grey willows and the dark-green syringa. On the low ground bordering the valley stood the church, with its attendant mission-houses and schools, and on the heights were perched the native villages, for the most part composed of round, conical huts, not unlike corn-stacks at a distance, with some more ambitious attempts at house-building in the shape of semi-European cottages. Eastward stretched a grassy plain, bounded by the horizon and westward a similar plain, across which, about five miles distant, was a range of low hills. Down to the right, in a bushy dell, was the little burying-ground, marked by a few trees.
It was a peaceful half-hour during which to watch the sunset. The light-blue smoke would be rising on the still air, the cattle just come in settling down in their various kraals; the Bechwana boys would be taking an evening canter on the backs of their young oxen, and the older men, as they looked upon the tranquil scene, would often recall the former years when the Kuruman valley was the gloomy and dreaded haunt of the wild Bushmen, with their poisoned arrows, and when the whole land was full of war and rapine.
In 1846 Mary Moffat started on a visit to the Livingstones at Chonwane. It added another to the list of her long and adventurous journeys alone, but her mother-heart was anxious about the daughter now enduring sickness and hardship in a new mission. She would not take away her husband from his work, so she availed herself of the escort of an accompanying native hunting party, and started with her three younger children.
Mary Moffat to her Husband.
“Maretsane, Sepf. 3, 1846. “We have kept plodding on since eight o’clock on Monday morning, averaging seven or eight hours a day; the stages agreeing pretty well with your memorandum — of which I am glad, as I do not feel so utterly strange on the road. Tell Ann I did not sleep well last night, and my thoughts fixed on her as a theme of meditation. 1 could not but contemplate her alone in this desert, and I thought till I was melancholy, and then again till my heart was filled with joy and thankfulness that she was brought safely amongst us. I am very glad of Boey’s company, although it is, like many other good things in this world, attended with its evils. I should indeed have felt very solitary with my lone waggon, wiih ignorant people, but he is so completely at home in this field that one feels quite easy. We do not stop at nights by the waters, but come to them at midday, and then leave about three or four o’clock. We cannot but be constantly on the outlook for lions, as we come on their spoor every day, and the people sometimes hear their roar. Just before outspanning to-day Boey, being on horseback looking for water, met with a majestic one, which stood still and looked at him. He tried to frighten him, but he stood his ground, when Boey thought it was time to send a ball into him, which broke his leg, by which he is disabled from paying us a visit. We have very much to be thankful for, never even having had a fright. Till to-day we have always had water at the places where it is usual. Here we have had to dig for it. The country is mdeed very dry. Game is tolerably plentiful. We got beautiful water yesterday in the sandy bed of the Sillagole River. I regretted not having your book with me, to refresh my memory as to past events in these localities with the Barolong and Mantatees, not excepting your own doings. I had no idea that Sitlagole had ever had such a river.”
“Chonwane, Sept. 15, 1846. “Through the goodness of our heavenly Father we arrived here on the loth, and found all well. Having written some days before from the Maretsane, I had not had leisure to write again, Sunday having been a most disagreeable day, spent at a place called Raphutse, a good stage from Mabotsa. At the Maretsane it was so dry that our oxen could not drink. We could have got water by digging at some considerable distance from the outspan place, but there being so many mdications of the district being greatly infested with lions, our party having wounded two, I strongly advised them to rather face thirst than an encounter nocturnally with these formidable animals. In this I was warmly seconded by Martinus, and so we spanned in an hour before sunset, and rode about two hours. Here we were allowed to rest quietly, though they were heard in every direction at a distance.
“We did not come on your old route to the Maretsane, but farther west, which made our stage only five hours to Lotlakane, where we got water, though at some distance from the road; and again started about four o’clock, and arrived at Molopo about dusk, and found the river flowing, which surprised the people, on account of the prevailing drought. We had everywhere seen abundance of game, and Boey and his friends got plenty of flesh. The children also were much pleased with the variety of animals they were privileged to see; and Boey was very obliging in bringing them before us whenever it was practicable. I had just gone to bed when a troop of buffaloes came to the river to drink. One of them was quickly despatched, and this was an additional treat for the children next morning to see his huge head.
“I was perfectly enraptured on entering the first valley (Maanwane) of the Bakhatla: and it being necessary for me to get out of the waggon on account of the rugged path, I could examine the shrubs to my great delight. It seemed altogether another region of the world. We passed through it about sunset, and were anxiously straining our eyes to get a sight of the station, when I found we had still to go through a small and romantic kloof, forming a passage between the two valleys, and we had to cross the stream two or three times. In one of these fords Boey’s waggon stuck fast, and all efforts to extricate it were vain. They struggled hard till darkness put an end to the attempt for the time, and Boey sent me word that we were now so near that I must drive on and leave them. This I refused to do. He had behaved politely to me all the way; besides the conviction that our people ought to do their best to help our fellow-travellers, who had broken their disselboom.
“I had had a long walk up and down the hill, and was greatly excited by ever>’thing about me, and felt terribly nervous and weak, and was glad to lay down my head to rest in that beautiful kloof. Had I not been so tired I would have sat till midnight, that the moon might shed additional beauty on the scenery.
“As soon as the moon rose the men returned to their work at Boey’s waggon, unloading and pulling it out, and mending the boom. We had a good breakfast, a fine eland steak shot the day before, and rode into Mabotsa about ten o’clock.”
After a day spent with the Edwardses at Mabotsa, she accomplished the remaining thirty miles to Chonwane, the station of Livingstone; where her presence, as much as the supplies she had brought with her, soon wrought a change and recruited the health and spirits which had run low. It was a great delight to her to see the first steps in the planting of Christianity among a heathen tribe, and reminded her of the early days of the Kuruman. She never forgot these, and ever regarded it as a sacred duty to strengthen the hands of those who passed on to the interior.
Early in 1847 a general meeting of those engaged in the Bechwana Mission was held at Lekatlong. On his way back to his station, Moffat visited some of the Batlaping villages along the Kolong River. The advance which had taken place of late years was striking. A severe contest was going on between heathenism and Christianity. A little company of believers had, however, been gathered in each place, and were ministered to by native teachers, who had spent a few months in training at Kuruman. These people were feeling the pressure of the surrounding heathenism, and were proposing, in many instances, to remove to Kuruman. From this step they were dissuaded by the missionary, who pointed out to them the value of their presence and testimony to the gospel in the midst of a heathen community. The test of their sincerity has no doubt been severe, and has led to many relapses; but greater rehance can be placed on those who remain firm in the midst of some of the more heathen villages in isolated situations, than on those who, under the wing of the missionaries at headquarters, have every inducement to maintain their profession.
Whilst Robert Moffat was thus engaged, death had entered his Scottish home; his father having passed away after only a few days’ illness. He had been for fifty years an officer of the Government in the customs, and had just retired on pension. His son Richard, who had never left his parents, and continued to reside with his mother until her death, writes thus:
“I do think that he had been rather falling off for some time past, though he always looked so fresh in the face, and his spirits were so buoyant in the presence of friends. I saw that in doing some little things in the garden he was more easily fatigued than formerly, though I attributed it entirely to the weakness of one at his age — upwards ol seventy-nine, mother’s age exceeding his by some ten months. She is eighty, past 7th of March.
“Our father enjoyed his pension one month only, so that he has not been a burden on the country. We will miss him much. He was always looking out and putting things to rights, and being a man of peace was a cementer of differences when any arose; and it grieved him to see those who ought to dwell together in unity, snarling and disagreeing with one another.”
“KURUMAN, Sept. II, 1847.
“My dear and widowed Mother, — It is with feelings of the deepest sympathy I thus address you. By a letter just come to hand from Helen I learn this melancholy intelligence. How deeply you must feel the sudden stroke in thus being severed, after a union of nearly sixty years, from him who was the husband of your youth. Had it been the announcement of your own departure I should have felt less, for you seemed to be like one sipping at Jordan’s stream for several bygone years; and you have lived to see my beloved father laid in the silent grave, gone before you to the abodes of the redeemed. Though I cannot restrain my tears, I will not, I cannot complain. How gracious has our heavenly Father been to us, your children, in sparing you to us so long, and in circumstances, too, which have called on us loudly to give thanks to Him who appoints the bounds of our habitation. Mother, dear mother, your many prayers have been heard. Well do I remember the time when prayer was called for. Wherever I am I never forget how much I owe to your prayers. The first dawn of reflection respecting my soul commenced with hearing you pray. Oh may He who has been your refuge continue to be your shield and stay; may He wipe away the falling tear and heal the wound that His hand has made! It is a Father’s hand. I frequently remember the last words of your now sainted father, * Faithful are the wounds of a friend.’ There are many links which hold us down to earth. One is snapped, and we know not how soon another and another.
“I still thank my indulgent God that I was, with my family, permitted to see you once more after twenty-three years’ absence. This was a great favour. I never during that long period expressed a wish that it should be so, for I was the bond-servant of the perishing heathen for Christ’s sake, but He whom we served in the gospel of His Son brought it about in His own good time.”