1812. 
POVERTY KRAAL. 
37 
visitors, because they were desirous of conducting me to their kraal, 
as a mark of friendship : which it certainly was, if we consider with 
what jealous care this nation always conceal from the colonists the 
place of their abode. They brought us to the summit of the ridge, 
where, situated between heaps or hillocks of large stones, and un- 
sheltered by either tree or bush, we found half a dozen wretched 
weather-worn huts, having only one-third of the circumference 
enclosed, and utterly incapable of protecting their inhabitants from 
the inclemency of wind or rain. But at this kraal not one individual 
had been left at home ; want had driven every one abroad to dig up 
his daily food in the plain. Within these huts there was no property 
of any kind, except in one or two, a dirty furless skin, or the shell of 
an ostrich-egg. Never before had I beheld, or even imagined, so 
melancholy, so complete, a picture of poverty. 
" Here -" said they, as they pointed to the huts, " this is our 
home.'''' — And having paused a few moments, they seated their thin 
emaciated bodies on the ground, and looked up to me with such 
speaking expression of humility and want, that I felt a tear, which 
could not be suppressed, trickling down my cheek. Abstracted from 
every other thought, my whole mind was absorbed in the con- 
templation of what was before me. Well ! I involuntarily exclaimed 
to myself, and is this the home of human beings ! Have / been sleep- 
ing on the bed of ease, and pampered with a thousand useless 
luxuries, while my fellow-creatures have been wandering the burning 
plains from day to day, and have returned at last to their wretched 
huts to pass the painful night in hunger, and unsheltered from the 
storm ! Yes, unfavoured savages, unpitied and despised as ye are by the 
thoughtless and unfeeling, ye still are men, and feel the pains of want, 
the misery of care ; untutored as ye are, ye still are not too ignorant 
to know that injustice and oppression confirm no right, and that God 
has given liberty equally to all ; rude and uncivilized as ye are, ye still 
are not insensible to the dictate of conscience, that kindnesses should 
be remembered with a grateful heart. Unblest among the nations 
of the earth, ye seem but to share these plains with beasts of prey, 
and but to stand the next degree above them : yet do ye breathe the 
