Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 1).djvu/151

This page needs to be proofread.

his ordinary congregation amounted to 500. I went to the morning service on Sunday, and found the building apparently full. I think there was no white person there besides the clergyman, my companion, and myself. As the service was performed in Dutch I did not stay long, contenting myself with the commencing hymn—which was well sung, and very long, more Africano. I had at this time been in various Kafir places of worship and had become used to the Kafir physiognomies. I had also learned to know the faces of the Hottentots, of old Cape negroes, of the coloured people from St. Helena, and of the Malays. The latter are not often Christians; but the races have become so mixed that there is no rule which can be accepted in that respect. Here there were no Kafirs, the Kafirs not having as yet made their way in quest of wages as far west as Worcester.[1] The people were generally Hottentot, half negro,—with a considerable dash of white blood through them. But in the church I could see no Europeans. It is a coloured congregation, and supported altogether by contributions from the coloured people.

The school interested me, however, more than the church. I do not know that I ever saw school-rooms better built, better kept, or more cleanly. As I looked at them one after another I remembered what had been the big room at Harrow in my time, and the single school-room which I had known at Winchester,—for there was only one; and the school-room, which I had visited at Eton and Westminster;

  1. Mr. Esselin told us that since he had been at Worcester he had had a few but only a very few Kafir children in his schools.