They recognised him as a great chief, and his whole career is eloquent of the extraordinary devotion which he inspired in them. At the end of May, 1841, he was at Kuruman, with instructions from the Directors of the Society to turn his attention to the North--instructions that absolutely coincided with his own aspiration. It is notable that he formed the very highest opinion of the value of Christian missions from the results that he saw. Let it be remembered that he was always a slow, cautious Scot in all his judgments, with a severely truthful and scientific mind, and his testimony becomes the more valuable. “Everything I witnessed surpassed my hopes,” he writes home; “if this is a fair sample the statements of the missionaries as to their success are far within the mark.” He is full of the praises of the Christian Hottentots, who are “far superior in attainments to what I had expected;” their worship reminded him of the old covenanters. It was thus, then, that with his zeal for his mission of evangelism greatly stimulated, he started north to the country of the Bakwains. A short circuit sufficed to reveal the problem, and he returned to Kuruman to think out the best plan of campaign. The first step was a characteristic one. It was to isolate himself absolutely from all European society and live among the natives, so as to learn their language and study their habits and their laws. For six months he rigorously pursued his plan, and found his reward in the new appreciation he gained of the native character and mode of thinking, and the extent to which he conquered their confidences. So far advanced had he become in the knowledge of their language that he was able to enjoy a laugh at himself for “turning poet.” One can believe that to Livingstone this was no easy work; but he succeeded in making Sechuana translations of several hymns which were afterwards adopted and printed by the French missionaries. “If they had been bad,” he says in his naïve way, “I don’t see that they can have had any motive for using them.”