They Are Also Far Cleaner In Their Huts
Than Any But The VERY BEST English Poor.
The 'Predigt' was delivered, after more singing, by a missionary
cabinet-maker, in Dutch, very ranting, and not very wise; the
congregation was singularly decorous and attentive, but did not
seem at all excited or impressed - just like a well-bred West-end
audience, only rather more attentive.
The service lasted three-
quarters of an hour, including a short prayer and two hymns. The
people came out and filed off in total silence, and very quickly,
the tall graceful girls draping their gay silk shawls beautifully.
There are seven missionaries, all in orders but one, the
blacksmith, and all married, except the resident director of the
boys' boarding-school; there is a doctor, a carpenter, a cabinet-
maker, a shoe-maker, and a storekeeper - a very agreeable man, who
had been missionary in Greenland and Labrador, and interpreter to
MacClure. There is one 'Studirter Theolog'. All are Germans, and
so are their wives. My friend the storekeeper married without
having ever beheld his wife before they met at the altar, and came
on board ship at once with her. He said it was as good a way of
marrying as any other, and that they were happy together. She was
lying in, so I did not see her. At eight years old, their children
are all sent home to Germany to be educated, and they seldom see
them again. On each side of the church are schools, and next to
them the missionaries' houses on one side of the square, and on the
other a row of workshops, where the Hottentots are taught all
manner of trades. I have got a couple of knives, made at
Gnadenthal, for the children. The girls occupy the school in the
morning, and the boys in the afternoon; half a day is found quite
enough of lessons in this climate. The infant school was of both
sexes, but a different set morning and afternoon. The
missionaries' children were in the infant school; and behind the
little blonde German 'Madels' three jet black niggerlings rolled
over each other like pointer-pups, and grinned, and didn't care a
straw for the spelling; while the dingy yellow little bastaards
were straining their black eyes out, with eagerness to answer the
master's questions. He and the mistress were both Bastaards, and
he seemed an excellent teacher. The girls were learning writing
from a master, and Bible history from a mistress, also people of
colour; and the stupid set (mostly black) were having spelling
hammered into their thick skulls by another yellow mistress, in
another room. At the boarding school were twenty lads, from
thirteen up to twenty, in training for school-teachers at different
stations. Gnadenthal supplies the Church of England with them, as
well as their own stations. There were Caffres, Fingoes, a
Mantatee, one boy evidently of some Oriental blood, with glossy,
smooth hair and a copper skin - and the rest Bastaards of various
hues, some mixed with black, probably Mozambique.
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