energy never failed; and there was a grace and dignity about her whole deportment and manner which caused 'the Lady' to be the emphatic title always given to her by her husband and his friends. Of these the Mackenzie family were among the warmest, and the Archdeacon gladly gave valuable assistance to Mr. Robertson by supplementing an education which had not been definitely clerical, but rather of that order which seems to render an able Scotsman fit to apply himself to almost anything.
In February 1857 another sister, named Alice, joined the Mackenzie family, when they were on a visit to the Umlazi station. Her quick powers and enthusiastic spirit fitted her in a wonderful manner for missionary labour, and she was at once in such sympathy with the Kaffirs that it was a playful arrangement among the home party that Anne should be the white and Alice the black sister.
Just after her arrival, it was determined that the Archdeacon should leave Durban, where, indeed, he had been only filling the post of an absent clergyman, and take a district on the Umhlali river, forty miles from Durban, containing a number of English settlements, a camp, and a large amount of Kaffir kraals. Every Sunday he had five services at different places, one of them eighteen miles from the nearest, a space that had to be ridden at speed in the mid-day sun. There was no house, but a couple of rooms with perpendicular sides and a verandah, one for chapel, the other for sitting-room, while Kaffir beehive huts were the bedrooms of all. For a long time blankets and plaids did the part of doors and shutters; and just as the accommodations were improving, the whole grass and wattle structure was burnt down, and it was many months before the tardy labour of colonial workmen enabled the family to take possession of the new house, in a better situation, which they named Seaforth, after the title of the former head of the Mackenzie clan.
All this time the whole party had been working. A school was collected every morning of both boys and girls; not many in number, but from a large area: children of white settlers, varying in rank, gentlemen or farmers, but all alike running wild for want of time and means to instruct them. They came riding on horses or oxen, attended by their Kaffirs, and were generally found exceedingly ignorant of all English learning, but precocious and independent in practical matters: young boys able to shoot, ride, and often entrusted with difficult commissions by their fathers at an age when their cousins at home would scarcely be at a public school, and little girls accustomed to superintend the Kaffirs in all household business; both far excelling their parents in familiarity with the language, but accustomed to tyrannize over the black servants, and in danger of imbibing unsuspected evil from their heathen converse. It was a task of no small importance to endeavour to raise the tone, improve the manners, and instruct the minds of these young colonists, and it could only be attempted by teaching them as friends upon an equality.
With the Kaffirs, at the same time, the treatment was moulded on that of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, who at one time paid the Umhlali a visit, bringing with them their whole train of converts, servants, orphans, and adopted children, who could be easily accommodated by putting up fresh grass huts, to which even the Europeans of the party had become so accustomed, that they viewed a chameleon tumbling down on the dinner-table with rather more indifference than we do the intrusion of an earwig, quite acquiesced in periodically remaking the clay floor when the white ants were coming up through it, scorpions being found in the Archdeacon's whiskers, and green snakes, instead of mice, being killed by the cat.
The sight of Christian Kaffirs was very beneficial to the learners, to whom it was a great stumbling block to have no fellows within their ken, but to be totally separated from all of their own race and colour. At Seaforth, the wedding was celebrated of two of Mr. Robertson's converts, named Benjamin and Louisa, the marriage Psalms being chanted in Kaffir, and the Holy Communion celebrated, when there were seven Kaffir communicants. The bride wore a white checked muslin and a wreath of white natural flowers on her head. This was the first Christian Zulu wedding, and it has been followed by many more, and we believe that in no case has there been a relapse into heathenism or polygamy.
The Mackenzies continued at Seaforth until the early part of the year 1859. The work was peaceful and cheerful. There were no such remarkable successes in conversion as the Robertsons met with, probably because in the further and wilder district the work was more pioneering, and the Robertsons had never been without a nucleus of Christians, besides which the gifts of both appear to have been surpassing in their power of dealing with natives, and producing thorough conversions. Moreover, they had no cure but of the Kaffirs, whereas Archdeacon Mackenzie was the pastor of a widely scattered population, and his time and strength on Sundays employed to their very uttermost. Church affairs weighed heavily upon him; and another heavy sorrow fell on him in the death of the guardian elder sister, Mrs. Dundas. Her illness, typhus fever, left time for the preparation of knowing of her danger, and a letter written to her by her brother during the suspense breathes his resigned hope:-'Dear Lizzie, you may now be among the members of the Church in heaven, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. If so, we shall never meet again on earth. But what a meeting in heaven! Any two of us to meet so would be, more than we can conceive, to be made perfect, and never more to part.' And when writing to the bereaved husband after the blow had fallen, he says: 'Surely we ought not to think it strange if the brightest gems are sometimes removed from the workshop to the immediate presence of the Great King.'
But the grief, though borne in such a spirit, probably made him susceptible to the only illness he experienced while in Natal. The immediate cause was riding in the burning sun of a southern February, and the drinking cold water, the result of which was a fever, that kept him at home for about a month.
There was at this time a strong desire to send a mission into independent Zululand, with a Bishop at its head. Bishop Colenso was at first inclined to undertake the lead himself, resigning Natal; and next a plan arose that Archdeacon Mackenzie should become the missionary Bishop. The plan was to be submitted to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and for this purpose the Archdeacon was despatched to England, taking Miss Mackenzie with him; but the younger sister, Alice, having so recently arrived, and being so valuable as a worker among the natives, remained to assist in the school of young chiefs who had been gathered together by Bishop Colenso.
The time of the return of the brother and sister was just when Dr. Livingstone's account of the interior of Africa, and of the character of the chiefs on the Zambesi, had excited an immense enthusiasm throughout England. He had appealed to the Universities to found a mission, and found it they would, on a truly grand scale, commensurate with their wealth and numbers. It was to have a Bishop at the head, and a strong staff of clergy, vessels built on purpose to navigate the rivers, and every requisite amply provided. Crowded meetings were held at each University, and the enthusiasm produced by the appeal of Dr. Livingstone, a Scottish Presbyterian, to the English Universities, as the only bodies capable of such an effort, produced unspeakable excitement. At a huge meeting at Cambridge, attended by the most distinguished of English Churchmen, Archdeacon Mackenzie was present. His quiet remark to the friend beside him, was, 'I am
Thus Livingstone became almost as much the guide and referee of the Zambesi expedition as ever a Cardinal Legate was of a crusade. Nor could this be wondered at, for the ordinary Englishman is generally almost ignorant of missions and their history, and in this case an able and interesting book of travels had stirred the mind of the nation; nor had experience then shown how much more there was of the explorer than of the missionary in the writer.
From the first, Archdeacon Mackenzie was designated as the chief of the mission. He felt the appointment a call not to be rejected. His sister Anne viewed it in the same spirit, and was ready to cast in her lot with him, and letters were written to the other sister in Natal proposing to her to accompany them. Then came a year of constant travelling and oratory in churches and on platforms, collecting means and rousing interest in the mission-a year that would have been a mere whirl to any one not possessed of the wonderful calmness and simplicity that characterized Mackenzie, and made him just do the work that came to hand in the best manner in his power, without question or choice as to what that work might be.
By the October of 1860 all was ready, and the brother and sister had taken leave of the remaining members of their family, and embarked at Southampton, together with two clergymen, a lay superintendent, a carpenter and a labourer, and likewise Miss Fanny Woodrow, Mrs. Robertson's niece, who was to join in her work. Their first stage
