310 TRAVELS IN 
find means to subsist by their cattle, sheep, and horses. 
Many of the women and children of soldiers, belonging to the 
Hottentot corps, reside at Bavian's kloof, where they are 
much more likely to acquire industrious habits than by re- 
maining in the camp. 
On Sundays they all regularly attend the performance of 
divine service, and it is astonishing how ambitious they are 
to appear at church in neat and clean attire. Of the three 
hundred, or thereabouts, that composed the congregation, 
about half were dressed in coarse printed cottons, and the 
other half in sheep-skin dresses ; and it appeared, on inquiry, 
that the former were the first that had been brought within 
the pale of the church ; a proof that their circumstances at 
least had suffered nothing from their change of life. Persua- 
sion and example had convinced them, that cleanliness in their 
persons not only added much to the comforts of life, but was 
one of the greatest preservatives of health ; and that the little 
trifle of money they had to spare was much better applied 
in procuring decent covering for the body, than in the pur- 
chase of spirits and tobacco ; articles so far from being ne- 
cessaries, that they might justly be considered as the most 
pernicious evils. 
The deportment of the Hottentot congregation, during di- 
vine service, was truly devout. The discourse delivered by 
one of the fathers was short, but replete with good sense, 
pathetic, and well suited to the occasion : tears flowed abun- 
dantly from the eyes of those to whom it was particularly 
addressed. The females sung in a stile that was plaintive and 
