In coming down to the coast, not knowing the passes of the Drakensberg, they made a circuit around by Grahamstown of something like 1,500 miles, and reached Natal at the end of July.[5] This account may read as fiction in the present day, but it is notwithstanding a “romance in real life;” what the early missionaries suffered and endured to propagate the truths of divine religion among the heathen in former days, we can now with difficulty conceive. Dr. Lindley, on his return from Mosega, founded a mission station at Ifumi, at the south side of D’Urban, but owing to the rupture between Durgaan, the Zulu king, and the Boers, together with the murder of Retief and party, on February 6th, 1838, who had gone to ask the Zulu king’s permission to settle on the south side of the Tugela, the American missionaries considered it prudent to leave Natal for a time. Dr. Lindley, however, remained behind, but after the burning of his station at Ifumi, and after experiencing many dangers, he escaped on board the _Comet_, a little schooner, lying in the D’Urban harbor, and after first visiting Delagoa Bay, landed at Port Elizabeth on June 22d, 1838. Here he remained twelve months, until peace was restored by the complete overthrow of Durgaan, when he returned to Natal, and commenced, with the approval of his Board, to labor among the Dutch; and was the first to take over the pastoral care of the emigrant farmers. The Rev. John McCarter says: “As pastor he labored amongst the emigrants for seven years (1840–1847) having as parish all Natal, together with the surrounding territories and the Transvaal Republic. Thousands of children were christened by him; his headquarters were Pietermaritzburg, Winburg, and Potchefstroom. It was thus that in 1843 the congregations of Winburg and Pietermaritzburg were amalgamated. Dr. Lindley himself mentioned to the writer, that at all times and places his words were listened to with the greatest concern, and the particular tenderness with which after his departure the memory of Lindley was continually held in these regions by those who knew him, witness what great good his labors brought about.”[6] In 1847 Dr. Lindley resumed his connection with the American Board, beginning his work again among the Zulus at the Inanda. In that year he was appointed with Dr. Adams, by the Colonial authorities, on a commission to see justice done to the natives, the instructions given to them being “that there should not be in the eye of the law any distinction or disqualification whatever, founded on mere distinction of color, origin, language or creed, but that the protection of the law, in letter and in substance, shall be extended impartially to all alike.”