THE CAPE MALAY. 
35 
three taverns, &c. &c. I don’t know, therefore, that I can 
well give the place a name for any great morality; for, 
Avhile four churches rerpiire a certain amount of true or 
worldly religion to keep them up, the sixteen grog-shops, 
the three hotels, and the &c. &cs., call for even a greater 
amount of sin and dissipation. Each one of the churches 
to which I have alluded was tlie place of worship of 
ditferent denominations. In the first place, there was 
the Church of England, composed of most of the “first 
I)eople of the place,” — evidently the fashionahlc ehurcJi, the 
place where the richest dresses and the brilliant uniforms 
were to be seen. Then came the Mormons, with their 
seducing doctrines; next the Methodists; and both last 
and least came the lioman Catholics. With the excep- 
tion of the Mormons’, these churches are attended by 
persons of all classes; but the prolific followers of 
Joseph Smith, with very few exceptions, have succeeded 
in turning from the way of darkness (?) only members of 
a certain race. The “Cape Malay,” a people of whom I 
had never heard before our arrival, grasped eagerly at 
the demoralizing doctrine of a plurality of wives, and 
crowded around the sacred men who could uncurb the 
bit of sensuality and render null and void the restrain- 
ing laws of bigamy. 
And I was informed by Mr. Holmes, the American 
consul at Cape Town, that, although the converts to that 
creed were generally persons of no individual influence, 
still, from the simple fixet of the contagion spreading far 
and wide, it was rapidly becoming of importance from 
the sheer force of numbers. The same gentleman also 
informed me that upon the first arrival of the two 
