96 TRAVELS IN 
prentices to learn the useful trades, which, in their contracted 
ideas, would be to condemn them to perform the work of 
slaves. 
The management of the young people is almost wholly 
left to the slaves, and their education much neglected. The 
government made an attempt, but without success, at the 
establishment of a public school ; and the individual had no 
other ambition but that of qualifying his sons, by writing and 
accounts, to become servants of the Company. This body 
of merchants had a number of persons in their employ who 
were very ill paid. Their salaries indeed were insufficient to 
afford them a bare subsistence ; but it tacitly allowed them 
to negociate for themselves. The consequence of such a 
system was what might easily have been foreseen, that each 
became a kind of pett}'^ dealer, and dealt very frequently and 
liberally with the wares and merchandize of his employers. 
Each had his little private shop in some corner of his house. 
The most paltry articles were in the list of their commodities 
for sale ; and those who ranked high in the government, and 
assumed a string of full-sounding epithets to their names, felt 
no sort of indignity in retailing the produce of their gar- 
dens ; not indeed avowedly, but through the medium of 
their slaves. In fact, the minds of every class, the governor, 
the clergy, the fiscal, and the secretary of the court of justice 
excepted, were wholly bent on trade. Koopjium or merchant 
was a title that conferred rank at the Cape, to which the mi- 
litary even aspired. On this subject the ideas of the Dutch 
difler widely from those of the Chinese, who have degraded 
