THE HOTTENTOT QUESTION. 313 
amongst the natives. Such, however, was, un- 
happily, not the case in the other Missionary 
stations which then sprang up along the border 
districts of the old colony. 
The very independent ideas which, in con- 
junction with religious teaching, were there 
inculcated amongst the Hottentots, conduced, 
it is to be feared, to confirm them in habits 
of idleness and indolence; and it was soon 
manifest, that they found an undisciplined and 
unmolested life spent in and around these sta- 
tions, far preferable to those of work and in- 
dustry which they had been accustomed to, on 
the various farms of the boers. 
No government interference or controul of 
any kind, was claimed or exercised upon these 
stations, and even disclosures were made which 
tended to shew that, occasionally, a magisterial 
authority was assumed, to punish offenders by 
juries, and modes of punishment also devised by 
the Missionaries within these schools. These 
being left unnoticed by the Government, were 
jealously viewed by the Dutch, as unjustifiable 
interferences, all tending to widen the breach 
between them and the Missionaries and their 
Hottentot protegees. 
These were some of the causes which induced 
the farmers to become dissatisfied on this point, 
mainly because they believed, to use the words 
