The Wanderer in Africa: A Tale Illustrative of the Thirty-Second Psalm

A didactic Christian adventure tale written in the mid-19th century. It follows the fall and repentance of young Englishman David Aspinall as he wanders in southern Africa, with Psalm 32 shaping a story of guilt, grace, and providence amid desert perils and a cruel Boer master. Blending travel hazard with moral instruction, it likely targets younger or family readers who enjoy faith-centered adventure. The opening of the tale shows David, a worn and remorseful servant to the hard-hearted Boer Hans Kuhe, keeping a lonely night watch in the African waste, where memories of home and verses from Psalm 32 awaken true repentance. Flashbacks tell how he defied his parents, fled rural Dorset for London, slid into vice, was shamed in court before his father, and then fled further to Africa to serve the Boer. Forsaken in the desert with a swollen ankle, he confesses his sins, survives on a providential melon and root, drives off wild dogs from a springbok, and keeps vigil through a lion-haunted night. At dawn a lion closes in, but two English hunters, Manners and Carlton, shoot it and befriend him; David resists the temptation to keep his cruel master’s lost purse, returns it via the hunters, and later they find the Boer stripped by Bushmen and dying from a poisoned arrow, underscoring the Psalm’s themes of confession, guidance, and deliverance.