APRIL.] 
BETHELSDORP. 
youth, it is a very difficult matter indeed to acquire a 
habit of industry in riper age. Those who have been 
brought up in Hottentot kraals have been accustomed 
still more to idleness and sloth than even those who 
have been reared in the service of the boors. Mr. 
Kicherer, minister of Graaf Reynet, once remarked 
to me, that a bushman would willingly go a journey 
of two days for a piece of tobacco ; but he would not 
dig five spadefuls of earth for the same reward ; and 
from what I have since seen of that people, I believe 
Mr. Kicherer's testimony to be correct 
Labour and civilization are not to be forced instan-* 
taneously on any people, but must be effected by 
gradual progression. The Spaniards in South America 
had so intense a thirst for the golden ore, after its 
discovery and conquest, that they had not patience to 
lead forward the feeble natives of that region by 
degrees to labour in their mines, but compelled them 
to work like men that had been long inured to hard 
labour ; the result was, the almost entire depopulation 
of the country. 
That many of the Hottentots of Bethelsdorp are 
industrious, will appear by the statement of various 
facts. I found among them eighteen different em- 
ployments, viz, smiths, carpenters, waggon-makers, 
basket-makers, blanket-makers, (viz. of sheep skins 
sewed together very neatly, bought by officers in the 
army, &c.) tobacco-pipe-makers, sawyers, turners, 
hewers of wood, c^^rriers, soap-boilers, pnat-manufac- 
