With so large a family, thrift was required, and in the little cottage at Harcus in Peeblesshire, the children were packed closely, and brought up hardily, without bedroom carpets, hot water, or many servants to wait upon them.

Decided Episcopalians, they took an active part in the building of a small church near their own home, but in later life, Anne felt that she doubted whether there was much real religion amongst the children.— "I believe it consisted in our thinking ourselves superior to our Presbyterian neighbours".

Anne was at this time seventeen, and was supposed to be out of school, but she had always a great desire to learn, and out of her own small allowance, she managed to take lessons and attend classes, and to cultivate her love of music by going to concerts.

[9] On 7 March 1855 the Mission Party of 44 people boarded the barque, Jane Morice, at Liverpool, and the Colony of Natal was sighted on 19 May.

[13] Anne was ashamed of the difficulty she had in bearing many things which other women in the Colony took as a matter of course, but she was not a professed missionary; she had come to Natal for her health.

She conquered her shrinking away from African people in general, but her special inclination was for English girls, whom she felt she understood and sympathized with.

The school of colonists' children which gathered round her and her brother and sister at the Umhlali station was a great interest as well as exhausting effort.

[2] By January 1857, Charles was no longer the Rector of Durban so until a decision was made as to where he should be settled next, Anne removed to the Umlazi station.

While Anne stayed behind in England, Charles spent the greater part of the year 1860 in traveling the countryside of the new mission to familiarize himself with the almost unexplored area.

The next day, they started for Southampton, and then on to Cape Town with the Mission party, which included two clergymen, Mr. Procter and Mr. Scudamore; Mr. Waller, the Lay Superintendent, who was also something of a doctor; Gamble, a carpenter, and Adams, a labourer.

[32] At Cape Town, Anne was left as the guest of Bishop Robert Gray, while her brother and the pioneers of the expedition proceeded in HMS Lyra, commanded by Captain R. B.

She was the guest of Bishop Gray, and during the waiting time that had to elapse before her brother could possibly receive her on the Zambesi, she made herself useful in the schools, and interested herself in other branches of the church work going on at the Cape.

Henry de Wint Burrup, one of the clergy of the Mission, had brought his newly married young wife out to the Cape a few months before, and she was to be Anne's companion all the way.

Mrs. Livingstone was also of the party, on the way to join her husband at the river mouth; and Jessie, the English servant, who had done so well in Natal, had proved willing to encounter the greater hardships of Central Africa, and was with her mistress.

Anne knew she should not be able to walk, and the terrible tsetse fly kills all the horses who venture in that area; but she provided herself with a donkey called "Katie", and that too was on board the small, crowded brig.

Another reason for the crowding on board was that the Hetty Ellen was bringing out a small paddle steamer called the Lady Nyassa, in which it was hoped Dr. Livingstone would be able to get further up the rivers than was possible in the Pioneer.

He took Anne and Mrs. Burrup on board his own vessel, and with the Hetty Ellen in tow, they sailed for Kongone, a primary distributary of the Lower Zambezi, on 22 January.

[35] Tormented with mosquitoes and suffering from intermittent fever, they reached the landing place only to learn of the death of both the Bishop and Mr. Burrup, the former on Malo Island, which they had passed on the way, at the confluence of the Ruo and the Shire.

[36] Anne and the others left Chibisas on the Pioneer, and on 2 April they transferred to the Gorgon before landing at Cape Town at the end of the month.

The letters from the station at Kwamagwaza, copied and lent about, described their own story, and wherever Anne went, she found a way to awaken a keen interest in her friends.

This led to Anne collecting the letters written at the Umlazi and at Kwamagwaza into a memoir, Life of Henrietta Robertson, giving the best insight into the ups and downs of missionary work by the wife of the chaplain of the garrison of Fort-Etchowe, and of the Kafir character.

For several years, a young nephew, who was like herself too delicate to live in Scotland, shared her home, and to some slight extent, her work.

[41] The collection for the Mackenzie Mission at length was sufficient for the foundation of a Bishopric, a work almost without example to have been accomplished by a single and not richly-endowed woman in feeble health.

To some, she became counselor or the means of obtaining counsel on matters of church discipline and doctrine, while to outgoing clergy or sisters, she was a sympathizing adviser, able to prepare them for unsuspected stumbling-blocks or to inspire them by the example of her own devotion.

[42] One year, when spending the winter in Rome, she offered her services to the English Chaplain, and he gathered around her a class of the children of Englishmen employed there who were out of reach of religious instruction.