“I’ll give you forty pounds for it, and not a penny more,” said David, feeling for the purse in his coat pocket.
“Fifty and it’s yours, and that’s as low as I’ll go,” replied the trader.
David looked around. No other wagons were in sight, and this was a particularly large one. It would need twelve oxen to pull it, but it should carry more than enough supplies for three missionaries and three native guides. “Done,” he finally said. “I’ll give you half the money now and the other half when I come back with the oxen. My partner should be buying them right now.”
The trader nodded. “So you’re headed north, are you?” he asked. “But not to join the Boers. You have a Scottish accent if I’m not mistaken.”
“That’s right. Glasgow, in fact. I’m headed up to Kuruman to the mission station,” responded David.
“Ha,” replied the trader, wiping his brow with a dusty handkerchief. “So you’re a missionary, are you? Well, you watch yourself heading that way. It’s not as safe as it used to be up there. The Boers have moved in to the Zulus’ land. It was guns against spears, and the Zulus couldn’t keep them out. Now the Zulus have moved down closer to the coast, pushing other tribes off their lands. This struggle between the Zulus and the Boers is a pot waiting to boil over, you mark my words. The English think they’ve got rid of the Boers, but no good will come of them taking land from the natives.” He pointed his finger at David and then added, “Just mind you don’t get stuck in the middle of it. It’ll be a nasty business when it blows up.”
David nodded. He had heard a lot about the Boers and their trek into the hinterland of southern Africa. And while he admired their determination and courage, he could not agree with the way they had settled land already belonging to African tribes. What the trader had said made perfect sense. It would be only a matter of time before hatred of the Boers turned into widespread bloodshed. “Thank you for the advice. I’ll be back soon,” David finally said to the trader, handing him twenty-five pounds.
David walked a little farther along the rambling street that was transformed into a market every Wednesday morning. This was the third week in a row he and William Ross had come looking for a wagon and oxen. Getting supplies together for the trip to Kuruman had taken five times longer than David had imagined it would. Still, at least they now had a wagon.
“Over here,” called William Ross. “What do you think of these?”
David looked in the direction from which William Ross was beckoning. Tied to a post were three of the toughest-looking oxen he had ever seen. They were unlike any animal David had encountered in Scotland. They were bulky, mean-looking animals with curled horns that lay flat against the back of their neck.
“The owner says there are twelve of them,” said William. “What do you think?”
“They look fine to me,” said David, “as long as they’re all that big and healthy. How much does he want for them?”
“Three pounds each,” replied William Ross.
“Then let’s buy them,” said David. “I’ve found a wagon that will do fine, and it needs a dozen oxen to pull it. It looks like we’re in business at last! At the rate we were going I thought we might be stuck here till spring.” David grinned to himself as he spoke. Finally things were coming together.
The two missionaries returned with the wagon and oxen to the boardinghouse where they were staying in Port Elizabeth. It took them two more days to gather all the supplies they would need for the journey north. The Reverend Moffat had told David it would take about two months to get to Kuruman, so they made sure they bought enough food for the trip. They loaded cheese, salt bacon, coffee, tea, beans, flour, and sugar into the wagon. They also purchased cots to sleep on. The Rosses were going to sling theirs inside the wagon, while David would use a small one-man tent.
Finally, on the morning of May 15, 1841, the group was ready to leave Port Elizabeth. David couldn’t wait to get away from all signs of civilization and out into the wilds of Africa. Within an hour, he had his wish. Port Elizabeth was behind them, and in every direction was spread the vastness of the African continent. The three Africans they had hired to guide them walked alongside the wagon, pointing out interesting things and giving the Bantu names for antelope, gazelle, giraffe, and water buffalo.
Africa was all David Livingstone had imagined it would be—and more. The tall grasses, the fantastically shaped trees, the pink-tinged hills in the distance. David felt that this was what he had been born for. When they made camp on the third night, he wrote in his journal, “I like traveling very much indeed. There is so much freedom connected with our African manners. We pitch our tent, make our fire, etc., wherever we choose, walk, ride, or shoot an abundance of all sorts of game as our inclination leads us; but there is a great drawback: we can’t study or read when we please.”
The reason David couldn’t study and read when he pleased was that he had left the wagon for the Rosses to fuss around in. Since he could no longer stand their complaining, he either walked along with the African guides or rode one of the oxen pulling the wagon. Of course, this made it impossible for him to read or study, which he could have done had he been riding in the wagon. Still, it was better than listening to the complaints of his two companions day in and day out.
The group crossed several large rivers on the journey, including the Orange River, which caused a fresh outburst of panic from Mrs. Ross. As David clambered into the chest-deep water to soothe the oxen and lead them to the other side, he again wondered how he was ever going to get along with these “veranda missionaries.”
Progress was slow on the trip. Kuruman was six hundred miles from Port Elizabeth, and they were covering about ten miles a day over the rocky ground. Thankfully, it was winter—the dry season—with no rain to make the journey any slower. Gradually they ate their way through their food supplies. They supplemented this food with the wild game David shot, providing them with many delicious dinners along the way. Every hundred miles or so they passed through a mission station. First there was Somerset East, then Colesburg, Phillipolis, and Griqua Town. At each mission station, they were welcomed and given what food and drink could be spared to take with them on their journey.
As they got closer to Kuruman, the landscape began to change. There were fewer trees now, and more thorny bushes. The riverbeds were dry, and the air was thinner, since they were climbing steadily from one plateau to the next as they moved farther inland. Seated at the campfire at night, David tried to write about everything he saw. He collected samples to send back to his friend, Professor Owen, at the Hunterian Museum in London. He wished he could describe more fully what he was seeing. No naturalists had ventured this far inland into Africa, and David tried his best to help Professor Owen understand the wonders of the landscape. Everywhere he looked he saw something he had never seen before, never even dreamed of. Snakes slithered from behind rocks, scorpions scuttled around in the dust, wildly colored spiders wove impossibly big webs outside his tent at night, and armies of ants carried off any food foolishly left unattended.
Eventually, on July 31, 1841, David Livingstone caught his first sight of Kuruman, the most inland missionary station in Africa. Kuruman had been established by the Reverend Moffat almost twenty years before. Of course, the Reverend Moffat and his family were not back from furlough yet, but the group was given an enthusiastic welcome in Kuruman by the missionaries living there—Roger Edwards and his wife and Robert Hamilton. Within an hour of arriving, the wagon had been unloaded and the oxen led away to be watered. David and the Rosses soon found themselves seated at a table on the veranda of the main mission house. Mrs. Edwards, a motherly woman in her late forties, busied herself, bringing tea and sandwiches and chattering with Mrs. Ross. David and William Ross produced newspapers and letters from Port Elizabeth. The papers were nearly three months old by now, but they were the latest news available to the missionaries at Kuruman.
After Roger Edwards and Robert Hamilton had looked over the newspapers and read some of the letters, the conversation turned to the mission compound and life in Kuruman.
“Let’s leave the ladies here to discuss the fineries of African fashion,” said Roger Edwards, jumping to his feet. “I’ll show you around the compound.”
The four men stepped off the veranda.
“I’ll show you the church first. It’s over this way,” said Roger, moving to the front of the group.
As they rounded the corner of the mission house, David was awed by the huge, mud brick building he saw. “Is that the church?” he asked, thinking how much bigger and better it was compared to the churches at the other mission stations they had passed through along the way.
“It certainly is,” replied Roger. “We have over four hundred natives here every Sunday.”
“Amazing,” said David. “To think there are four hundred Christian men and women out here in the middle of Africa.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say they are all Christians,” said Roger, who paused and looked down at the ground for a moment before continuing. “Actually, only about forty of them are really Christians, that’s if you mean people who have been baptized and follow the teachings of the church.”
“Oh,” said David. “Forty Christians? You don’t mean there are only forty Christians in the whole of Kuruman, do you?”
“I’m afraid so. It’s not as easy as you might think converting the natives. They have their own ways of doing things, you know,” defended Roger Edwards.
David was too stunned to ask any more questions for the moment. Twenty years and only forty converts!
“Look over here,” cut in Robert Hamilton brightly, changing the subject. “This is one of our best projects yet—an irrigation system.”
David’s eyes lit up. Engineering was something he could appreciate. The four men walked on past the church to where many acres of lush land stretched eastward. It looked exactly the way David had always imagined the Garden of Eden to look. Huge flower bushes and vegetable plants vied for space in the sun. The branches of orange and lemon trees dipped low under the weight of their fruit. Color and life were everywhere. And running through the middle of it all were ditches flowing with fresh, cold water.
“Where does the water come from?” asked David.
“The Eye of Kuruman. That’s what we call the spring,” said Robert Hamilton, adding, “It’s one of the best springs around, too.”
The men traced the irrigation ditches back to the enormous gushing spring. On the way they passed blacksmith and carpentry workshops. David peeked inside the carpentry shop, where he found everything laid out in perfect order. The rasps and screwdrivers were arranged in descending order, and there was a small wood lathe in the corner. David thought back to the hours he had spent learning to turn wood on the lathe in the workshop at Anderson College. He might be able to put those skills to work in Kuruman.
The sun was going down in a spectacular blaze of red as the men returned to the table on the veranda for another cup of tea. Mrs. Ross was happier than David had ever seen her. She was gushing praise for the china tea set they were drinking from and asking Mrs. Edwards endless questions about the cost of food and what the servants could and could not cook.
After drinking the tea, David was glad to get away from all the chatter and into the quiet of his own room. As he shut the door behind him, he realized it was the first time he’d been alone for weeks. He sat on the end of his bed and hauled his bag up beside him. He unbuckled it and reached inside to pull out his journal. Balancing a bottle of India ink on the edge of the bed, he dipped his nib. But what should he write? Should he write about meeting the Edwardses and Robert Hamilton? Or what about his first impressions of Kuruman, with the irrigation system, well-constructed church, and impressive carpentry shop? In the end, he did not write about any of this. Something else was on his mind. He jotted down the number forty.
