Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 1).djvu/166

 *portion are white, has an average attendance of 500 coloured children. The attendance at the missionary church is no better, the number of customary worshippers being the same as that of the scholars,—namely a hundred. With these people there is nothing to compel them to send their children to school, and nothing but the eloquence of the pastor to induce them to go to church. The same may be said as to all other churches and all other congregations. But we are able to judge of the utility of a church by the force of example which it creates. Among these people the very fashion of going to church is dying out.

But I was more intent, perhaps, on the daily employment than the spiritual condition of these people, and asked whether it sent out girls as maid-servants to the country around. The pastor assured me that he was often unable to get a girl to assist his wife in the care of their own children. The young women from the Missionary Institution do not care for going into service.

"But how do they live?" Then it was explained to me that each resident in the Institution had a plot of ground of his own, and that he lived on its produce, as far as it went, like any other estated gentleman. Then the men would go out for a little sheep-shearing, or the picking of Buchus in the Buchu season. The Buchu is a medicinal leaf which is gathered in these parts and sent to Europe. Such an arrangement cannot be for the welfare either of the Colony or of the people concerned. Nothing but work will bring them into such communion with civilization as to enable them to approach the condition of the white man. The