THE KARROO COUNTRY. 23 The population of the Hottentot race. To the north of the Namaquas lie the Damara tribes, of whom comparatively little is known, except that from their physical appearance and black colour, they approximate to the negroes and natives of Congo on the west coast. These tribes inhabit a country extending from the tropic of Capricorn to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the Atlantic to the shore of the Indian Ocean. The climate varies from that in which thunder storms and tornadoes shake the mountains, and the scorching rays of an almost vertical sun produce the mirage, to that which is salubrious and mild within the boundaries of the colony along Kafir-land to the fruitful and well watered plains of the Zoolu country in the vicinity of Port Natal, while the more mountainous and elevated regions are visited by keen frosts and heavy falls of snow. colony extends, from west to east, about 600 miles, its average breadth being about 200, containing a variety of climate, the healthiest perhaps to be found in any part of the world. Between the coast and the vast chain of mountains beyond which lie the Karroo, the country is well watered, fertile, and temperate. The other portions of the colony, with few exceptions and without a change in the seasons, appear to be doomed to perpetual sterility and drought. The Karroo country, which is the back ground of the colony, is, as Lichtenstein correctly describes it, a parched and arid plain, stretching out to such an extent that the vast hills by which it is terminated, or rather which divide it from other plains, are lost in the distance. The beds of numberless little rivers (in which water is rarely to be found) cross like veins in a thousand directions this enormous space. The course of them might in some places be clearly distinguished by the dark green of the mimosas spreading along their banks. Excepting these, as far as the eye can reach, no tree or shrub is visible. Nowhere appear any signs of life, nor a point on which the eye can dwell with pleasure. The compass of human sight is too small to take in the circumference of the whole the soul must rest on the horrors of the wide spread desert. This is only a part of the Karroo, viewed from the top of a hill by that intelligent traveller; but even on these hills and sun-burnt plains, thousands of sheep pasture on a thin sprinkling of verdure and esculents. One morning, after travelling several days in those Karroo plains, Mr. Campbell stood still, and remarked with great emphasis to Mrs. Moffat 24 THE KARROO COUNTRY. and myself, "Sirs, it would require a good pair of spectacles to see a blade of grass in this world." The entire country, extending in some places hundreds of miles on each side of the Orange River, and from where it empties itself into the Atlantic to beyond the 24th degree east longitude, appears to have the curse of Gilboa resting on it. It is rare that rains to any extent or quantity fall in those regions. Extreme droughts continue for years together. The fountains are exceedingly few, precarious, and latterly many of these have been dried up altogether. The causes and consequences of the diminution of the rains will be noticed as the writer traverses the different fields which have come under his own immediate observation; and if his long experience and inquiry on that and a variety of other subjects of interest and scientific research, should in any degree throw additional light on doubtful points, he will consider his labour amply rewarded, but his theme is man. This is a brief sketch of the different tribes which have been the objects of missionary labour, and the limits of which are defined in the accompanying map, intended more as a directory to the position of missionary stations and divisions of tribes, than a minute view of general typography. I have deemed it proper to be more particular on the Hottentot and Bushman character, as the following chapters present little more than an outline of the labours of missionaries among that people. This section of our operations is so well known from the copious journals and letters so long before the public, as well as from Mr. Campbell's first and second "Travels," and the "Researches" of the Rev. Dr. Philip, besides the works of other writers on the same subject, that it is the less necessary for me to make large additions to the valuable information thus supplied. CHAPTER II. THE London Missionary Society, on its establishment in 1795, directed its first efforts to the islands of the Pacific; in which the missionaries, after a long period of toil, under accumulated hardships, have witnessed triumphs of the Gospel the most signal, among a race of barbarians and cannibals, which it has ever fallen to the province of history to record. The attention of the Society was next directed to the vast and important field of Southern Africa, then wholly unoccupied, except by the United Brethren of Germany. The small Moravian church of Herrnhut sent forth her missionaries more than a century ago, first to the negroes of the West, and then to the fur-clad inhabitants of Greenland. "Fired with a zeal peculiar, they defy And plant successfully sweet Sharon's rose In July, 1736, George Schmidt, with something of that zeal which fired the bosom of Egede, the pioneer of the mission to Greenland, left his native country for that of the Hottentots. He was the first who, commissioned by the King of kings, stood in the vale of Grace, (Genadendal,) at that time known by the name of Bavian's Kloof, (the Glen of Baboons,) and directed the degraded, oppressed, ignorant, despised, and, so far as life eternal is concerned, the outcast Hottentots, to the Lamb of God, who tasted death for them. It is impossible to traverse the glen, as the writer has done, or sit under the great pear-tree which that devoted missionary planted with his own hands, without feeling something like a holy envy of so distinguished a person in the missionary band. When we remember that actions receive their weight from the circumstances under which they have been called forth, how exalted a glory must such an one as George Schmidt possess in the heavenly world, where one star differeth from another star in glory, compared with a great majority of the present day, who have doors opened to them, and a host of examples before them, with the zeal and 26 FIRST MISSION TO AFRICA. prayers of the whole Christian church to animate and sup port them! Though he could only address the Hottentots through an interpreter, his early efforts were crowned with success, and the attendance at the first Hottentot school ever founded rapidly increased. The Hottentots, with all their reputed ignorance and apathy, justly regarded him with sentiments of unfeigned love and admiration; and so evidently was the Gospel made the power of God, that in the course of a few years he was able to add a number of converts to the church of the first born. In 1743, the lonely missionary was compelled to visit Europe, when the Dutch East India Company, actuated by representations that to instruct the Hottentots would be injurious to the interests of the colony, refused to sanction the return of this messenger of mercy to that unfortunate people. Every effort to resume the Mission was fruitless, till the year 1792, when Marsveldt, Schwinn, and Küchnel sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. They received every attention, and went in search of the spot where, more than half a century before, Schmidt left his little band. Part of the walls of his house was indeed still standing, and in the garden were several fruit-trees planted by his hands; whilst various ruins of walls, at a short distance, marked the site of the lowly cottages which were once inhabited by his affectionate hearers; and, what must have been overpowering to these followers of so good a man, one of the females whom he had baptized, by the name of Magdalena, was also found out, and appeared to have a tolerable recollection of her former teacher, though she was now about seventy years of age. She also produced a New Testament, bearing the marks of constant use, which he had presented to her. This she had preserved as a precious relic, and, although now bent down with age and feebleness, she expressed great joy on being informed that Marsveldt and his companions were the brethren of her old and beloved pastor. The Hottentots who remembered Mr. Schmidt, or had heard of his labours of love, rallied around the standard again erected; and though great and many were the trials and distresses of the missionaries, often threatened with destruction and murder, all recorded in the chronicles of heaven, their labours were blessed; and, through Divine help, the Moravian Missions have prospered, and spread their branches through different parts of the colony, and to the Tambookies beyond it, where they have now a flourishing station. What a remarkably display have we here of the faithfulness and VANDERKEMP'S MISSION TO THE KAFIRS. 27 mercy of God, in preserving the seed sown by Schmidt in a most ungenial soil, and left to vegetate in an aspect the most forbidding, for such a length of time! Who can doubt the Divine assurance, "My word shall not return unto me void ?" On the 31st of March, in the year 1799, Dr. Vanderkemp, accompanied by Messrs. Kicherer and Edmonds, landed at Cape Town, then in the possession of the Dutch. Dr. V. selected Kafir-land as the field of his operations, while Mr. Kicherer, accompanied by Mr. Kramer, yielded to a call of Providence, and proceeded to the Bushmen on the Zak River. Vanderkemp, who was a native of Holland, seemed, from his experience, natural firmness of character, and distinguished talents, prepared for the Herculean task, at once to force his way into the head-quarters of the enemy, and raise the standard of the cross amidst a dense population of barbarians, the most powerful, warlike, and independent of all the tribes, within or without the boundaries of the Cape colony, and who, notwithstanding the superior means for human destruction enjoyed by their white neighbours, still maintained their right to their native hills and dales. He might at once, with comparative little trouble or hardship, have fixed his abode among the Hottentots within the colony, to whom he eventually devoted all the energies of his body and mind, in raising that depressed, degraded, helpless, and enslaved race, to freemen in Christ Jesus, and breaking the fetters that a cruel policy had riveted on that hapless people, the aborigines and rightful owners of a territory now no longer theirs. The Doctor, having cast his eye over the condition of the Hottentots, concluded that there was scarcely any possibility of making progress among a people so proscribed by government, and at the mercy of their white neighbours, on whom they could not look without indignation, as any other human beings would have done in similar circumstances; he therefore, very naturally, directed his steps to those who were yet free from these unnatural restrictions. Having received every encouragement from the English government, and recommendatory letters to the farmers, he left Cape Town. The country through which he had to pass was thinly, and in many places newly inhabited. The party arrived at Graaff Reinet on June 29, after having, with their attendants and cattle, experienced many narrow escapes from lions, panthers, and other wild beasts, as well as from Bushmen and Hottentots, of character still more |