before the world becomes overstocked with accomplished members of that
profession. Let them be always honored according to their deserts; and
long may Maclear, Herschel, Airy, and others live to make known the
wonders and glory of creation, and to aid in rendering the pathway of
the world safe to mariners, and the dark places of the earth open to
Christians!

I beg to offer my hearty thanks to my friend Sir Roderick Murchison,
and also to Dr. Norton Shaw, the secretary of the Royal Geographical
Society, for aiding my researches by every means in their power.

His faithful majesty Don Pedro V., having kindly sent out orders to
support my late companions until my return, relieved my mind of anxiety
on their account. But for this act of liberality, I should certainly
have been compelled to leave England in May last; and it has afforded me
the pleasure of traveling over, in imagination, every scene again,
and recalling the feelings which actuated me at the time. I have much
pleasure in acknowledging my deep obligations to the hospitality and
kindness of the Portuguese on many occasions.

I have not entered into the early labors, trials, and successes of the
missionaries who preceded me in the Bechuana country, because that has
been done by the much abler pen of my father-in-law, Rev. Robert Moffat,
of Kuruman, who has been an energetic and devoted actor in the scene for
upward of forty years. A slight sketch only is given of my own attempts,
and the chief part of the book is taken up with a detail of the efforts
made to open up a new field north of the Bechuana country to the
sympathies of Christendom. The prospects there disclosed are fairer than
I anticipated, and the capabilities of the new region lead me to hope
that by the production of the raw materials of our manufactures, African