Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 1).djvu/167

 arcadian idea of a coloured man with his wife and piccaninnies living happily under the shade of his own fig tree and picking his own grapes and oranges is very pretty in a book, and may be made interesting in a sermon. But it is ugly enough in that reality in which the fig tree is represented by a ruined mud-hut and the grapes and oranges by stolen mutton. The sole effect of the missionary's work has too often been that of saving the Native from working for the white man. It was well that he should be saved from slavery;—but to save him from other work is simply to perpetuate his inferiority.

The land at the Caledon Institution is the property of the resident Natives. Each landowner can at present sell his plot with the sanction of the Governor. In ten years' time he will be enabled to sell it without such sanction. The sooner he sells it and becomes a simple labourer the better for all parties. I was told that the Governor's sanction is rarely if ever now refused.

Then we went on to the Tradouw, and just at the entrance of the ravine we came upon a party of coloured labourers, with a white man over them, making bricks in the close vicinity of an extensive building. A party of convicts was about to come to the spot for the purpose of mending the road, and the bricks were being made so that a kitchen might be built for the cooking of their food. The big building, I was told, had been erected for the use of the convicts who a few years since had made the road. But it had fallen out of repair, and the new kitchen was considered necessary, though the number of men needed for the repair