| Description | Diary of Robert Laws, in hardbacked volume with lock, printed as 'Letts's Perpetual Diary No. 8', with some printed notes and a page per calendar day. Entries include mention of weather, illness and problems with patients, receipt of mail, thoughts of home, low spiritual points, preaching to and teaching the natives, negotiations with native chiefs, food, landscape and charting, preparing the settlement, language studies, problems with Mr. Young and Dr. Stewart, and with other personnel, problems with wild animals, problems with Thelwall (10 December 1877), accidental death of Thelwall while hunting baboons (24 March 1878), slave market, to which some wives suspected of adultery are sent (29 May 1876), practice of Mavite at birth of twins (1 June 1876), practice with 'deformed' children (31 July 1877), first marriage at mission house, an 'inroad on heathenism' (3 August 1877), magic lantern exhibition (25 June 1878), design for new kitchen, with sketch and dimensions (26 June 1878), brief note of design of new school (28 June 1877), travelling, practical work, including planting and building, By no means full. Longest entries tend to be 1875 - 1876. Note pages include MS list of daily positions at noon of the S.S. 'Walmer Castle' from London to Cape Town, June 1875, and notes of clothing and equipment ordered from home, March 1877, as well as some freight costs, 1876 - 1877. |