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 Moffat on Afrikaner's head; his conversion  brought home to the authorities that the mission had solved a political difficulty, and did something to enlist their sympathy. In December 1819 Mary Smith, who had overcome her parents' objection to her marriage with Moffat, arrived at Cape Town and married him on 27 Dec. 1819 in St. George's church, Cape Town. For fifty years Mary Moffat shared all her husband's hardships and trials, and her name must be associated with his among the pioneers of South African mission work.

A deputation from the London Missionary Society, consisting of Dr. Philip and John Campbell, arrived at Cape Town at the close of 1819. They appointed Moffat superintendent at Lattakoo, and he set out early in 1820 with his wife, arriving at Lattakoo, about one hundred miles from Griquatown, at the end of March. Shortly after their arrival they made an expedition to the westward, along the bed of the Kuruman river, among the villages of the Botswanas. On their return to Lattakoo they were informed by letter from Cape Town that permission had not been granted for them to remain there, and they went to Griquatown, then inhabited by a mixed multitude of Griquas, Korannas, Hottentots, Bakwanas, and Bushmen, to assist Mr. Helm in organising the mission there. On permission arriving from Cape Town the Moffats returned to Lattakoo 17 May 1821, and devoted themselves to mission work and to acquiring a knowledge of the language.

Troubles, however, soon began. The warlike Matabele tribe, under Mosilikatse, climbed the Kwathlamba range and drove out many of the Bapedi and Bakwana tribes, the fugitives pouring down on the western Bakwanas. Moffat, who had heard only vague rumours of what was going on, made a reconnaissance to the north-east. On arriving at Mosite, after some days of travel, he learnt that the Mantatees, as the fugitive tribes were called, were in actual possession of the Baralong towns close to the eastward of the mission, and were on their way to Lattakoo. Moffat hurried home, warned his own people, and hastened to Griquatown to seek the aid of the Griquas. By the time the government commissioner, Mr. Melville, and the Griqua chief Waterboer, with one hundred men, reached the station, the Mantatees had occupied Letakong, only thirty-six miles away. The two Europeans, Moffat and Melville, with Waterboer and his men, met them halfway at the Matlwaring river, and after vain attempts to get speech with them were driven back, and obliged in self-defence to fight. About five hundred Mantatees were killed, and some thousands put to flight. The mission was saved, the invaders retiring never to return. Moffat had distinguished himself by his devotion to the wounded and the women and children, and he gained a personal ascendency which he never lost over the tribes that he had protected.

Circumstances, however, still appeared so threatening that Moffat sent his wife and children for a time to Griquatown, and towards the end of the year (1823) he took them a two months' journey to Cape Town, where he obtained supplies, and conferred with Dr. Philip about the removal of the mission from Lattakoo to Kuruman. They returned to their station in May (1824). Moffat went on 1 July on a long-promised visit to Makaba, the chief of the Bangwaketsi, at Kwakwe. During his absence his wife was in a position of great anxiety. A horde of evil characters, marauding runaways of mixed blood, from the Cape Colony, with Korannas, Bushmen, and Namaquas, had established themselves in the mountains to the westward of Griquatown, and had been joined by renegade Griquas, mounted and armed with guns, who resented the discipline of Waterboer and the other Griqua chiefs. So great was the disquiet and the fear of an attack on Lattakoo that a second time Moffat and his family took refuge at Griquatown. Early in 1825, the western banditti having retired, the Moffats commenced to lay out the new station at Kuruman, to which they had been ordered to remove from Lattakoo. They raised three temporary dwellings, when again a band of armed and mounted marauders made their appearance. The natives at the old station gave way before them, losing nearly all their cattle, and could not be persuaded to return, but drifted away eastward to the Hart or Kolong river. With a dwindled population the work of the missionaries was less onerous, and Moffat commenced his first regular effort to lay the foundation of a Sechwana literature. A spelling-book was prepared and sent to Cape Town to be printed. In 1826 steady progress was made in the erection of the mission buildings, and Moffat devoted all his spare time to manual labour. In 1827 the station at Kuruman was sufficiently advanced to permit Moffat to perfect himself in the Sechwana language, by spending a couple of months in the encampment of Bogacho, a chief of the Baralongs, on the border of the Kalahari desert. On his return the marauders again appeared, and the missionaries had a third time to retire temporarily to Griquatown.

From the commencement stolid indifference to the work had reigned among the