like wild beasts, who had
their hands turned against every man, and every man's hand turned
against them.

To the Moravians belongs the honour of first seeking to bring the
natives of South Africa under the influences of Christianity. In 1737
George Schmidt, who had been sent forth by the small Moravian church of
Herrnhut, arrived in Cape Colony, and at Genadendal (the Vale of Grace),
then known as Bavian's Kloof (the Glen of Baboons), established a
mission station, where he laboured among the despised and oppressed
Hottentots with much success for seven years. His work excited
considerable opposition and persecution. He gathered a small Christian
community and a school; but the Boers, or Dutch farmers, becoming
jealous of the black population receiving education, he was summoned to
Holland, and not allowed to return.

Fifty years elapsed before the Brethren were able to resume their work;
but in 1792, three humble Christian artisans recommenced labour at
Genadendal. The occupation of the colony by the British Government gave
security to their mission, and it soon grew to be a large settlement,
and a centre of light and civilisation to the surrounding country.

In 1799 the London Missionary Society commenced work in Cape Colony; at
first by four brethren, who were shortly reinforced by Dr. J.P.
Vanderkemp, a native of Holland, a man of rare gifts and dauntless
courage. Successively scholar, cavalry officer, and physician, he was
for some years a sceptic, but being converted through the drowning of
his wife and child, and his own narrow escape from death, he commenced
the earnest study of the Bible and the Eastern languages, and gained
such wonderful proficiency in the latter, that it is stated he had a
fair knowledge of sixteen.

Vanderkemp chose the Kafir tribes for his field of labour, and in 1799
proceeded from Graf Reinet, then the most distant colonial town, and
that nearest to the Kafirs, to the headquarters of that people.
Frequently in danger of his life, among those who considered the murder
of a white man a meritorious deed, he worked and endured great hardship
and privation, that he might make known the truths of the Gospel to the
ignorant around, until the close of the year 1800, when, owing to a
rebellion among the farmers, and the general unsettled state of the
frontier, he was compelled to relinquish his mission.

[Illustration]

Afterwards he laboured among the Hottentots of the colony with rare