82 
TRAVELS IN 
their children their unfortunate hiftory and their country's 
difgraceful condudt. 
The means of education, it is true, muft be very difficult to 
be had among a people fo widely fcattered over a vaft extent 
of country as the peafantry are in the colony of the Cape, 
Some have a perfon in the houfe whom they call the fchool- 
mafler. This is generally a man who had ferved out his time 
in the ranks. His employment, in this new fituation, is not 
only to inftrudt the children to read, to write, to fmg pfalms, 
and get by heart a few occafional prayers, but he muft alfo 
make himfelf ferviceable in other refpedls. At one place that 
we paiTed, the poor fchoolmafter was driving the plough, 
whilfl; a Hottentot had the more honorable poft of holding and 
directing it. The children of thofe who either cannot obtain, 
or afford to employ, fuch a perfon, can neither read nor write ; 
and the whole of their education confifts in learning to fhoot 
well, to crack and ufe with dexterity an enormous large whip, 
and to drive a waggon drawn by bullocks. 
A book of any kind is rarely feen in any of the farmers' 
houfes, except the Bible and William Sluiters Gefangen, or 
fongs out of the Bible done into verfe by the Sternhold and 
Hopkins of Holland. They affed: to be very religious, and 
carry at leaft the devotion of religion fully as far as the moft 
zealous bigots. They never fit down to table without a long 
■grace before meat pronounced with an audible voice by the 
youngeft of the family ; and every morning before day-light 
one of William Sluiter's Gefangen is drawled out in full chorus 
by 
