38o A JOURNEY IN 
civilized Ciiiiiese to the commission of infanticide on tlieir own * 
offspring, it is the less surprizing that a similar or a still 
more hopeless condition should operate similar effects on 
the savage Bosjesman. Human nature is every where the 
same. When the Moravian missionaries first landed in La- 
brador, the same inhuman practice, though with the most 
benevolent intention, prevailed among the natives of putting 
to death the widows and the orphans ; not because it was an 
ancient custom, or that the shedding of human blood was 
agreeable to their nature, but for a much strono-er reason : 
improvident o^ their own families, thej could not be sup- 
posed to supply the means of support for the helpless orphan 
or the desolate widow of another. And here the superior 
advantages resulting from the system of the Moravians over 
that of the Gospel missionaries are most forcibly demonstrated. 
Instead of encouraging the natives in their rambling dis- 
position from place to place, they laboured to fix them to 
one spot ; instead of preaching to them the mysterious parts 
of the gospel, they instructed them in useful and industrious 
habits ; instead of building a church, they erected a store- 
house. They caused this common store to be divided into 
as many compartments as there wxre families, leaving one at 
each end larger than the rest to be appropriated solely to 
the use of the widoAvs and the orphans ; and having taught 
them the process of salting and drying the fish caught in vast 
multitudes in the summer months, the produce was collected 
into this general depository of their industry, to serve as a 
provision for the long and dismal winter which reigns in this 
inclement climate ; deducting, however, from the compart- 
ment of every family a tenth of the produce, to be deposited 
4 
