James Laing was born on 6 September 1803 and was raised in the Scottish Lowlands. He read classics, philosophy, theology and a range of medical subjects at Edinburgh University where he enrolled in 1822. The Glasgow Missionary Society assigned Laing to Burnshill Mission on the Eastern Cape frontier. He sailed for the Cape on 11 October 1830. From that day, he kept a journal almost without break, until a week before his death. Laing’s journals comprise four bound volumes and more than two thousand pages in toto. These are housed in the Cory Library for Humanities Research, Rhodes University as part of the Lovedale Institution Collection. Laing’s journal constitutes a major element in the small body of extant Glasgow Missionary Society records. It was decided to edit, for this study, the first portion of the journals only.