376 TRAVELS IN 
derstanding, that an institution so encouraged cannot fail to 
prove of infinite advantage to a colony where useful labor 
is so much wanted. If any example were capable of rous- 
ing the sluggish settlers, that of six hundred people being 
subsisted on the same space of ground, which every indi- 
vidual family among them occupies, for they had nothing 
more till very lately than a common loan fami of three miles 
in diameter, would be sufficient to stimulate them to habits 
of industry. 
Other missionaries, but of different societies, have lately 
proceeded to very distant parts of the colony, and some even 
much beyond it, both among the Kaffers to the eastward, 
and the Bosjesman Hottentots to the northward. The latter 
they represent as a docile and tractable people, of innocent 
manners, and grateful to their benefactors beyond expression ; 
but the Kaffers, they say, are a volatile race, extremely good 
humoured, but turn into ridicule all their attempts to convert 
them to Christianity. Mr. Kicherer, a regular bred minister 
of the reformed church, and a gentleman of mild and per- 
suasive manners, proceeded, alone and totally unprotected, 
into the midst of the Bosjesman hordes on the skirts of the 
Orange River. He considered, that a solitary being without 
arms, or any visible means of doing injury to his fellow mor- 
tals, would be received without suspicion, and might enter 
into the society of the most savage hordes without danger. 
The event proved his conjectures to be right. He lived in 
the midst of a tribe, the most needy and wretched that he 
could discover, for many years ; shared with them every in- 
convenience ; and suffered a total privation of all the com- 
