Journal of a Visit to South Africa, in 1815 and 1816; with some Account of the Missionary Settlements of the United Brethren near the Cape of Good Hope. By the Rev. C. J. Latrobe.

(From the British Critie, for July, 1818.)

We are not quite sure, that the Missionaries themselves act fairly in magnifying, lauding, and, above all, in publishing every event of their lives. Most unfairly, for a truth, if they wish the public to believe that what they do, and having done, proclaim, is alone worthy of commendation or notice. Chaplains of the Establishment, sent out to foreign stations, labour for years in the arduous, and often discouraging, duties of their calling, while the benefits they achieve are confined to the spot of their destiny. No pen is employed to give notoriety and acclaim to their toils or their sufferings. They sacrifice the comforts of their native land, equally with the Missionary; they risk their health equally with him, upon whom every eye is taught to dwell, and every tongue to praise. Silent and unknown they prosecute their work. Not so the Missionary: if he sails for India, or elsewhere, we must expect to be told, at the very first opportunity, all that has happened. What occurs daily to every other man, is translated in Missionary language, to dire event or peculiar visitation. Whatever such men see or fancy, is all interesting. They appear so to act as to give occasion to write; so to study effect, as though they were always sitting for their picture. Every thing is registered in their dear common-place book. With this we do not quarrel. Every man has a right to scribble what private nonsense he pleases, but no man has a right to publish, in exCensive quarto volumes, what none be

sides would think worthy of a sixpenny pamphlet. The error, however, may not be so much theirs who write, as theirs who read. If purchasers are to be found hungry enough to devour whatever trash they meet with, scribblers, both at sea and on shore, ave ever at hand to satisfy their appetite.

We confess freely, therefore, that in taking up a volume of Missionary Travels, we expect little. Some information can scarcely be withheld,

and what is related must be interesting in exact proportion as it is unknown. But this is not now the case with many of our colonies; and perhaps of all our colonies, the Cape of Good Hope has been most frequently and minutely described. Spearmann, Vaillant, Barrow, Lichtenstein, Percival, Fisher, and others, have long ago told us all that is worthy of being told. These, it may be replied, were general in their description, and, however, satisfactory either singly or collectively, have not afforded a full and just account of the Missionary settlements in that remote quarter of the world. So thought the London Missionary Society. Accordingly Mr. Campbell, as their representative, was sent out to inspect their missions at the Cape. To the Cape Mr. Campbell went, and having travelled through a well known colony, and extended his course somewhat beyond its frontiers, comes home and publishes a volume, which, we believe, has few equals, either for dearth of information, or vanity of self-complacency. This is both very childish and ill-judged. The missions of the London Missionary Society, at the Cape, are sufficiently in disgrace, without the undeserved eulogiums and silly vanity of Mr. Campbell. Dr. Vanderkemp, the founder of Bethelsdorp, was a very crazy kind of a personage. He seemed to set at defiance the wishes, and even the authority, of the local government, and to hold quite cheap any possible advancement amongst his people in civilization and useful industry. Bethelsdorp, therefore, became a nest of filth, and sloth, and vice. Instead of endeavouring to raise

the views and habits of his indolent and wretched followers, to those of cultivated life, he seemed determined to sink them still lower in the scale of human beings. As they would not rise, he fell; and the poor doating old man, despising all European refine ments, assumed their dress, emulated their nastiness, and, to complete the matter, married a young Hottentot wife. It is not till very lately, that we in this country have learnt the real state of a settlement, founded upon such principles, and by such a man. For a length of years we have read accounts in Missionary Reports, and Evangelical Diaries, which, in our untravelled innocence, we believed as true as they were fascinating. The veil, however, has lately been with drawn, by the sterner honesty of indubitable evidence, and instead of the earthly Eden which we had feigned, we can now only regard Bethelsdorp as the receptacle of fanatical indolence, and of voluntary misery, which deserves no compassion. Had the agents of the London Missionary Society at the Cape confined their accounts to downright, though, perhaps, painful facts, had they candidly represented their chief settlement, Bethelsdorp, as labouring under local difficulties, the want of wood and water the desolation of the soil, and its great distance from Cape Town; had they said that the whole institution was miserably wretched, from the bad selection of a spot by its founder, and by his subsequent and avowed contempt of all civil and rational advancement, we should not now have to learn and expose the artifices that have been too long and too successfully practised. Honesty is ever found the best policy. There must be reason in our praise, and justice in our partiality, or we injure that cause we pretend to forward. When prejudice covers defects, and when eager and crafty zeal flatters where it should correct, and misleads where it should reform, it always defeats its own ends. The age of "pious frauds," let us hope has passed away, and the great cause of religion and of truth must "go on and prosper," if not im

A

peded and disgraced by their profess-
ed, though treacherous friends.
plain and fair statement would suffi-
ciently have raised the sympathy and
drawn forth the aid of the good peo-
ple in England, without so gross an
abuse of their credulity. However,
we are bound in justice to add, that,
from the many loud and just com-
plaints made against the settlement
by the colonial government, from the
knowledge now spreading in this coun- !
try of the real state of the case, as
also from the emulation excited by
the superior plans of the Moravians,
things assume a more promising ap-
pearance. Industry and cleanliness
are at last admitted on the list of vir-
tues, and it has at length been found,
that ranting and rhapsody about faith
and conversion, without an endeavour
to be useful in our generation, is the
dictate neither of religion nor of rea-
son.

The collecting of so many of the natives into a body, is a most serious injury to the interests of a colony so thinly populated as the Cape, unless it can be proved that the comfort and improvement of the individuals are promoted. The Missionaries tell the Hottentots that they are the original possessors of the soil, and are free to act as they please. The Hottentot readily admits the soundness of this reasoning, and, therefore, without any kind of ceremony leaves the service of the farmer, where he is severely worked, and often not very kindly treated. Now from the scantiness of European population in the colony, and since the importation of slaves has been forbidden, the chief dependance in agriculture is upon the labour of the Hottentot. And as we all love rest more than toil, and prefer kind words and soft treatment to threats and ill-usage, it is not to be wondered at, that Bethelsdorp, however wretched, is crowded by inmates. So much labour is, however, completely lost to the settlement.

How imperiously, therefore, are the directors of these Missionary clans called upon to turn the employment of these people to good account, and to repay the sanction of the local government, by the

industry and usefulness, and moral and social improvement of their fraternities. The plan, however, of working for the farmer, and yet living at the Missionary villages, seems the one best calculated to answer; and has been adopted more or less at different times.

What the Hottentot, under proper guidance, may become, is evident, from the discipline and orderly behaviour of the Cape regiment, wholly composed of natives. The men make active soldiers, and their wives have been taught to throw away their sheep-skins for the gowns and caps of Europeans. Instead of the filthy and comfortless cabins, instead of the squalid and disgusting appearance of the Hotentots at Bethelsdorp, they have endeavoured to imitate the decencies of civilized beings, while their activity in the field, and their neatness in the camp, make them appear almost a distinct species from their countrymen.

One word on the general subject of churches in Southern Africa, and we shall proceed to the merits of Mr. Latrobe's journal. In a colony now decidedly English, it does seem somewhat extraordinary, that no efforts have been made to further and per, petuate that form of Christian worship established in the mother country. At this moment, the established church at the Cape is Calvinistic: and a church after this persuasion is built in every district of the colony, with the exception of Simon's Town, where there is an English Church and Chap lain. Even at Cape Town, there is no church for the English congregation, and the service is performed in the Calvinistic church, between their morning and afternoon duty. When a new district is formed, and many have been formed since the possession of the English, it never seems to have entered the mind of government, either in England or the Cape, to introduce the worship of the Established Church. In those districts where a Calvinist church has been already founded, it would be both unwise and unjust to interfere; but as the colony is daily increasing in extent and po

pulation, it surely seems advisable to introduce both the English Church and the English language. However inactive the friends of our Church may be, those of other communions are upon the alert. All the Missionary settlemens are within the boundaries of the colony. Guadenthal, the chief. Moravian settlement, is within seventy miles of Cape Town, and Groene Kloof, the other Moravian settlement, within twenty miles. A third is in contemplation. In addition to which many Missionaries, from the London Missionary Society, who have left this country with the professed intention of converting the natives, have taken up their residence, not among the Caffres and Bosjemans, but among the snug comforts of Cape Town. Here they seem inclined rather to settle, build chapels, and foster schism among the English settlers and soldiers, than to put their Bibles in their pockets, and trudge off bodily beyond the frontiers. We sincerely trust, that the ancient and venerable Society for propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, will ere long turn its attention to South Africa. The plan on which that Society proceeds in America, is admirably calculated to bestow great and permanent benefits on the Cape. A local Bishop or ecclesiastical Commissary, affords the advantage of parachial superintendance and pastoral cooperation, and establishes at once, as in India, on a solid footing, every endeavour to convert the natives to Christianity, and as subsidiary thereto, in that form of worship which we think the purest and the best. Were a Bishop or Commissary sent to the Cape, the evil complained of may at least be checked, if not repaired. Till that be done, Missionaries of every country and description, will pour into that inviting and distracted colony, and increase hourly and perilously the difficulties to be overcome.

But while we thus advocate the cause of our own Church, we cannot withhold our admiration and pur praise of others, who appear to have laboured so zealously and so successfully as the Moravians. Mr. Latrobe, in the volume before us, has not avoid