the part of the fathers, which is the cafe with moft other
miflionaries, to fwell the catalogue of converts to Chriftianity,
being more folicitous to teach their trades to fuch as might chufe
to learn them. Adopting the idea of the humane and ingenious
Count Rumford, their firft great objeft feemed to be that o f
making men happy, that they might afterwards become virtuous,
which is certainly much founder philofophy, than the
reverfe o f the propofition.
It would be fuppofed, that men like thefe, fo truly refpe&able
in their miffionary character, and irreproachable in their conduit,
would be well received and encouraged in any country; yet fuch
is the brutality and grofs' depravity o f the peafantry o f this
colony, that a party, eonfifting of about thirty, had entered into
a confederacy to murder the three teachers, and to feize and
force into their ferviee all the young Hottentots that might be
found at the place. Thefe horrid wretches had actually affem-
bled at a neighbouring houfe, on the Saturday evening, intending
on the following day, in the middle o f divine ferviee, to carry
their murderous purpofesinto execution. Luckily for the miffion-
aries, they had intimation o f what was going on through a Hottentot,
who deferred the ferviee o f one of the intended affaffins
for that purpofe. They had laid their apprehenfions before Sir
James Craig, who, in confequence, iffued his injundions, in a
letter to the overfeer of the poft of Zoete Melk valley, that no
inhabitant fhould in any fhape moleft the Hernhuters, on pain
of incurring the heavieft difpleafure o f the government. The
letter arrived on the very day they were affembled, and the
paltroons, on hearing it read, fneaked off each to his own home,
and
and the miflionaries flnce that time have continued to exercife
their funftions unmolefted. The caufe of the farmers’ hatred to
thefe people, is their having taught the Hottentots the ufe of
their liberty, and the value of their labor, o f which they had
long been kept in ignorance.
At the point of a fmall detached mountain, to the fouthward
of Bavian’s kloof, is a warm fpring, whofe waters are pretty
much ufed by invalids from the Cape. They are ftrongly
chalybeate, like thofe near Olifant’s river, and rife out o f the
fame kind of black turfy ground, in which were large maffes of
a brown ponderous iron ftone, that apparently contained from
60 to 70 per cent, o f iron. The Dutch government had caufed
a houfe to be eredted, for the accommodation of fuch as might be
inclined to ufe the waters; which is now in fo ruinous and filthy
a ftate, that the appearance of it is much better calculated to
haften the progrefs of the difeafe, than the convalefcence o f the
patient. Moft of the Engliih who have ufed the bath, have
taken their lodgings at a farm houfe, about a mile from the
wells, where there are comfortable accommodations for a few
perfons. The temperature o f the waters, where they firft
breakout of the ground, is 1 14° o f Fahrenheit, but in the bath
they are reduced to 1 io°. They are chiefly recommended for
rheumatic complaints and debilitated conftitutions.
From the bath we proceeded to the weftward, croffed a fteep
fandy hill, called the Hou boek, and on the feventeenth, de-
fcended the Hottentot’s Holland’s kloof, a difficult pafs acrofs
z z 2 the