Chap. II. EFFECTS OF SLAVE-SYSTEM. 33 



there tliree or four years, in building stone dykes and dams 

 for the Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of 

 that time they could return with as many cows. On presenting 

 one to their cliief they ranked as respectable men in the tribe 

 ever afterwards. These volunteers were highly esteemed among 

 the Dutch, under the name of Mantatees. They were paid at 

 the rate of one shilling a day and a large loaf of bread between 

 six of them. Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about 

 twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognised me with 

 the loud laughter of joy when I was passing them at their work 

 in the Eoggefelt and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town. 

 I conversed with them and with elders of the Dutch Church, 

 for whom they were working, and found that the system was 

 thoroughly satisfactory to both parties. I do not believe that 

 there is one Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, who 

 would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labour 

 passing to the colony, to deprive these labourers of their hardly- 

 earned cattle, for the very cogent reason, that, " if they want to 

 work, let them work for us their masters," though boasting that 

 in their case it would not be paid for. I can never cease to be 

 most unfeignedly thankful that I was not born in a land of slaves. 

 No one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of 

 the slave-system on the minds of those who, but for the strange 

 obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not 

 being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would be 

 equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them 

 as " paying one's way " is to the rest of mankind. 



Wherever a missionary lives, traders are sure to come ; they 

 are mutually dependent, and each aids in the work of the other ; 

 but experience shows that the two employments cannot very well 

 be combined in the same person. Such a combination would not 

 be morally wrong, for nothing would be more fair, and apostolical 

 too, than that the man who devotes his time to the spiritual wel- 

 fare of a people should derive temporal advantage from upright 

 commerce, which traders, who aim exclusively at their own en- 

 richment, modestly imagine ought to be left to them. But 

 though it is right for missionaries to trade, the present system of 

 missions renders it inexpedient to spend time in so doing. No 

 missionary with whom I ever came in contact, traded ; and while 



D 



