civilized Chinese to the commission of infanticide on their own
offspring, it is the less surprizing that a similar or a still
more hopeless condition should operate similar effects on
the savage Bosjesman. Human nature is every where the
same. When the Moravian missionaries first. landed in Labrador,
the same inhuman practice, though with the most
benevolent intention, prevailed among the natives of puttino-
to death the widows and the orphans ; not. because it was an
ancient custom, or that the shedding of human blood was
agreeable to their nature, but for a much stronger reason:
improvident of their own families, they could not be supposed
to supply the means of support for the helpless orphan
or the desolate widow of another. And here the superior
advantages resulting from the system of the Moravians over
that of the Gospel missionaries are most forcibly demonstrated.
Instead of encouraging the natives in their rambling disposition
from place to place, they laboured to fix them to
one spot; instead of preaching to them the mysterious parts
of the gospel, they instructed them in useful and industrious
habits; instead of building a church, they erected a storehouse.
They caused this common store to be divided into
as many compartments as there were families, leaving one at
each end larger than the rest to be appropriated solely to-
the use of the widows and the orphans ; and having taught
them the process of salting and drying the fish caught in vast
multitudes in the summer months, the produce was collected
into this general depository of their industry, to serve as a
provision for the long and dismal winter which reigns in this:
inclement climate; deducting, however, from the compartment
of every family a tenth of the produce, to be deposited
4
in those of the widows and the orphans. Their labours
were crowned with complete success. From this time a provision
was made sufficient for the preservation of these desolate
and helpless creatures. Thus the Moravian Society
has been the means of converting the inhabitants of Labrador
into useful citizens as well as good Christians, whilst
the African Society has not reclaimed a single Bosjesman
from the wild and savage state in which its zealous missionaries
first discovered him.
I f zeal alone was sufficient for the conversion of these
miserable creatures to Christianity, and consequently to a
state of civilization, no man has more merit nor better deserves
success than the missionary Kicherer. He is in every
respect a, truly worthy character, but he is an enthusiast;
and he feels and assumes to himself more merit in being able-
to relate some little anecdote of a savage applying or quoting
a scripture passage, than if he. had accomplished all that the
Moravians have done for the Hottentots (and they have done
much) at Bavian’s Kloof. He observes, for instance, in one
of his reports to the Society, that the Bosjesmans make a fire
by twirling the point of a stick on the surface of another :
that one of his people in a rainy night, not being able to succeed,
bethought himself of calling on Jesus, when he was
immediately answered, and struck up a good fire notwithstanding
the rain.
Every account that has been given of the Bosjesmans tends
to confirm the opinion of their being among the most miserable
of the human race, and in their present condition wholly