204 MISSIONARY FAILURE. Chap. X. 



of approaching footsteps, rises with a harsh scream. Thorn- 

 bushes, marked with the ravages of white ants, rank grass 

 with prickly barbed seeds, and noxious weeds, overrun the 

 whole place. The foul hyena has defiled the sanctuary, 

 ,and the midnight-owl has perched on its crumbling walls, to 

 disgorge the undigested remnant of its prey. One can 

 scarcely look without feelings of sadness on the utter desola- 

 tion of a place where men have met to worship the Supreme 

 Being, or have united in uttering the magnificent words, 

 " Thou art the King of glory, Christ ! " and remember, that 

 the natives of this part know nothing of His religion, not even 

 His name ; a strange superstition makes them shun this 

 ■sacred place, as men do the pestilence, and they never come 

 near it. Apart from the ruins, there is nothing to remind one 

 that a Christian power ever had traders here ; for the natives 

 -of to-day are precisely what their fathers were, when the 

 Portuguese first rounded the Cape. Their language, unless 

 buried in the Vatican, is still unwritten. Not a single art, 

 ■save that of distilling spirits by means of a gun-barrel, has 

 ever been learnt from the strangers ; and, if all the progeny 

 ■of the whites were at once to leave the country, their only 

 memorial would be the nuns of a few stone and mud-built 

 walls, and that blighting relic of the slave-trade, the belief 

 that man may sell his brother man ; a belief which is not 

 ■of native origin, for it is not found except in the track of 

 the Portuguese. 



Since the early Missionaries were not wanting in either 

 wisdom or enterprise, it would be intensely interesting to 

 know the exact cause of their failing to perpetuate their 

 Faith. Our observation of the operations of the systems, 

 whether of native or of European origin, which sanction 

 slavery, tends to prove that they only perpetuate barbarism. 



