114 
GARDENS AND MANUFACTURES 
13 April, 
seemed also eager to get a peep at the strangers. I could not help 
noticing the comparatively small proportion of male population that 
appeared in the settlement : this Mr. Kiister accounted for, by the 
number of men who were absent on service with the boors ; some 
by the week, others by the month, and a few by the year. If 
a Hottentot have property ; that is, provisions, sufficient for the 
support of his wife and children during his absence, he gene- 
rally prefers leaving them under the protection of the missionary 
establishment, to taking them with him to the farmers, where they 
hardly ever receive any other wages for their work, than their daily 
food. * 
Although their gardens, in neatness and good management, 
be much below the point at which it would be desirable to see them, 
it ought to be remembered, that any thing like horticulture in the 
Hottentot race, should be regarded as an extraordinary improve- 
ment on their ancient mode of living. Different vegetables and 
roots were seen in their gardens ; but tobacco and pumkins were to 
be found in almost every one. The women here, besides all their 
domestic employments, earn a little money by the sale of mats, 
which they manufacture from a kind of rush f , v6ry common in the 
rivers of this district. These rushes are sometimes so long as tq 
admit of being made into mats six feet in width : this is not done 
in the manner of interweaving, but by placing them parallel to each 
other, and transversely with respect to the length of the mat, con- 
necting them at every five or six inches by cords, made either of 
the same material, or of the bark of the Karro thorn -tree :f, run 
through them the whole length of the mat, by means of a long 
wooden or bone needle. 
We next visited the manufactory of cutlery, where I saw a 
considerable stock of all those articles for which there is any de- 
* Some further account of Genadendal ; its natural history, &c. will be found undei 
the date of the 13th of February to 7th March, 1815. 
f Cyperus textilis. 
X Acacia Capensis. B. See the Vignette at the head of Chapter X. 
