[Footnote 27: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1874, p. cxxviii.] Livingstone's relations with the Boers did not improve. He has gone so fully into this subject in his _Missionary Travels_ that a very slight reference to it is all that is needed here. It was at first very difficult for him to comprehend how the most flagrant injustice and inhumanity to the black race could be combined, as he found it to be, with kindness and general respectability, and even with the profession of piety. He only came to comprehend this when, after more experience, he understood the demoralization which the slave-system produces. It was necessary for the Boers to possess themselves of children for servants, and believing or fancying that in some tribe an insurrection was plotting, they would fall on that tribe and bring off a number of the children. The most foul massacres were justified on the ground that they were necessary to subdue the troublesome tendencies of the people, and therefore essential to permanent peace. Livingstone felt keenly that the Boers who came to live among the Bakwains made no distinction between them and the Caffres, although the Bechuanas were noted for honesty, and never attacked either Boers or English. On the principle of elevating vague rumors into alarming facts, the Boers of the Cashan Mountains, having heard that Sechéle was possessed of fire-arms (the number of his muskets was five!) multiplied the number by a hundred, and threatened him with an invasion. Livingstone, who was accused of supplying these arms, went to the commandant Krieger, and prevailed upon him to defer the expedition, but refused point-blank to comply with Krieger's wish that he should act as a spy on the Bakwains. Threatening messages continued to be sent to Sechéle, ordering him to surrender himself, and to prevent English traders from passing through his country, or selling fire-arms to his people. On one occasion Livingstone was told by Mr. Potgeiter, a leading Dutchman, that he would attack any tribe that might receive a native teacher. Livingstone was so thoroughly identified with the natives that it became the desire of the colonists to get rid of him and all his belongings, and complaints were made of him to the Colonial Government as a dangerous person that ought not to be let alone. All this made it very clear to Livingstone that his favorite plan of planting native teachers to the eastward could not be carried into effect, at least for the present. His disappointment in this was only another link in the chain of causes that gave to the latter part of his life so unlooked-for but glorious a destination. It set him to inquire whether in some other direction he might not find a sphere for planting native teachers which the jealousy of the Boers prevented in the east.