APRIL.] 
BETHELSDORP. 
125 
DISEASE. 
Spent part of April 2d and 5th, in the examination 
of ten men and two of their wives concerning the truth 
of the report I had heard that Bethelsdorp was a seat 
of a loathsome disease. 
I found that it was so, in the same way that the 
Lock Hospital, Penitentiary, Magdalen, or other 
hospitals in London may be so considered — that four 
men and seventeen women had been afflicted with it— 
that every one of these brought it with them to the 
settlement ; and I have the names of all the families 
from whence they came, (except one Hottentot, who 
brought it with him from the trunk (or prison) in 
Cape-town, where he had been confined as a witness 
called up to a trial,) which for prudential reasons I 
forbear publishing. 
The missionaries are not sent to such countries to 
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and were 
they only to receive Hottentots of good character to 
their settlements, they would appear ridiculous to the 
whole world. Physicians are not intended for the 
healthy, but for the sick ; in like manner the great 
concern of a good missionary should be the instruction 
of the ignorant, and the reclaiming of the vicious. If 
such as circulate reports like the above, in order to 
prejudice the minds of governors against missionary 
institutions, could prove that missionaries receive and 
retain bad characters in their churches or chris- 
