1811. 
FIRST MORAVIAN MISSION. 
105 
cottage close by, built expressly for the reception of visitors and 
strangers. At our lodging we were attended by two or three female 
Hottentot servants, very decently dressed ; and I confess that such 
a specimen of the improvement, in the point of personal cleanliness, 
in a race of human beings proverbially filthy, was judiciously placed, 
and did not fail to excite my surprise, at the same time that it was 
truly gratifying. The walls of our cottage were whitewashed within 
and without, and the ceilings of the rooms were formed of a reed, 
called by the colonists Spaansche riet (Spanish reed) *, very neatly 
bound together; but an earthen floor, though swept quite clean, 
had too unartificial an appearance. Such floors are of very general 
occurrence, and must long continue so in those parts of the country 
where timber is scarce ; but the force of custom and habit is re- 
markably exemplified by the fact, that even those boors, who dwell 
in the vicinity of the forests, still prefer an earthen, to a boarded, 
floor. 
The first mission to the Cape, for propagating the Christian 
religion, was commenced in the year 1737, by a person named 
Schmidt, sent out by the Moravian society at Hernhuth. He formed 
a little settlement at this spot, and had succeeded in collecting 
round him a few Hottentots ; but, finding too many impediments 
thrown in his way, by the colonists as it is said, he was at last 
obliged to abandon the undertaking, and finally returned to Europe 
in 1744. In the latter part of the year 1792, with the permission 
of the Dutch East India Company, three Moravian missionaries, 
named Marsveld, Schwinn, and Kiihnel, were sent out to renew 
the mission. They fixed themselves at the same place, where, 
after a lapse of nearly fifty years, they still found some useful 
remains of Schmidt's garden and hut. 
Such was the commencement of this interesting establishment, 
* Arundo Donax, Lin. This is a strong reed, of the thickness of about an inch at 
the lower end- It grows to the height of fifteen feet or more, and is cultivated very gene- 
rally by the boors, and applied to a variety of useful purposes. 
