Images de page
PDF
ePub

the place in 1848, and has had charge of the Institution since that date. That he has done more than any one else as a teacher and preacher among the coloured races, at any rate in the Western Province, I think will hardly be denied. But for Lovedale in the East of which I shall speak further on, I should have claimed this pre-eminence for him as to all South Africa. This I believe is owing to the fact that under his guidance the coloured people have been treated as might any poor community in England or elsewhere in Europe which required instruction either secular or religious. There has been a distinct absence of the general missionary idea that coloured people want special protection, that they should be kept separate, and that they should have provided for them locations, with houses and grounds. The ordinary missionary treatment has I think tended to create a severance between the natives and the white people who are certainly destined to be their masters and employers, at any rate for many years to come; whereas M. Esselin has from the first striven to send them out into the world to earn their bread, giving them such education as they have been able to receive up to the age of fifteen. Beyond that they have not, except on rare occasions, been kept in his schools.

The material part of the Institution consists of a church, and four large school-rooms, and of the pastor's residence. There are also other school-rooms attached of older date. The church has been built altogether by contributions from the coloured attendants, and is a spacious handsome building capable of containing 900 persons. M. Esselin told me that

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.* 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;

* 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.

and I was obliged to own that the coloured children of Worcester are very much better housed now during their lessons than were the aristocracy of England forty or fifty years ago. There has been an improvement since, but still something might be learned by a visit to Worcester. At Worcester the students pay a penny a week. At the other schools I have named the charges are something higher.

There are 500 children at these schools among whom I saw perhaps half a dozen of white blood. M. Esselin said that he took any who came who would comply with the general rules of the school. The education of coloured children is, however, the intention of the place. In addition to the pence, which do not amount to £100 a year, the Government grant,-given to this school, as to any other single school kept in accordance with Government requirements, amounts to £70 per annum. The remaining cost, which must be very heavy, is made up out of the funds raised by the congregation of the church. Under M. Esselin there is but one European master. The other teachers are all females and all coloured. There were I think seven of them. The children, as I have said before, are kept only till they are fifteen and are then sent out to the work of the world without any pretence of classical scholarship or ecstatic Christianity.

Having heard of a marvellous hot spring or Geyser in the neighbourhood of Worcester I had myself driven out to visit it. It is about 8 miles from the town at, or rather beyond, a marshy little lake called Brand Vley, the name of which the hot spring bears. It is adjacent to a Dutch farmhouse to

which it belongs, and is to some small extent used for sanitary purposes. If, as I was told, the waters are peculiarly serviceable to rheumatic affections, it is a pity that such sanitary purposes should not be extended, and be made more acceptable to the rheumatic world at large.

There is but one spring of boiling water. In New Zealand they are very numerous, bubbling up frequently in close proximity to each other, sometimes so small and unpronounced as to make it dangerous to walk among them lest the walker's feet should penetrate through the grass into the boiling water. Here the one fountain is very like to some of the larger New Zealand springs. The water as it wells up is much hotter than boiling, and fills a round pool which may perhaps have a circumference of thirty feet. It is of a perfectly bright green colour, except where the growth of a foul-looking weed defaces the surface. From this well the still boiling water makes its way under ground, a distance of a few yards into a much larger pool where it still boils and bubbles, and still maintains that bright green colour which seems to be the property of water which springs hot from the bowels of the earth.

At a little distance a house has been built intended to contain baths, and conduits have been made to bring a portion of the water under cover for the accommodation of bathers, while a portion is carried off for irrigation. We made our way into the house where we found a large Dutch party, whether of visitors or residents at the house we did not know; and one of them, a pretty Dutch girl prettily dressed, who could speak English was kind enough to show

us the place. We accompanied her, though the stench was so foul that it was almost impossible to remain beneath the roof.* It was difficult to conceive how these people could endure it and live. The girl opened the bath rooms, in which the so-called baths, constructed on the floor, were dilapidated and ruined. "They are all just now near broke to pieces," she said. I asked her what the patients paid. "Just sixpence a day," she replied, "because one cannot in these hard days charge the people too much." I presume that the patients were expected to bring their diet with them, and probably their beds.

[ocr errors]

And yet an invaluable establishment might be built at this spot, and be built in the midst of most alluring scenery! The whole district of which I am now speaking is among the mountains, and the Worcester railway station is not more than eight or ten miles distant. The Auckland Geysers in New Zealand cannot be reached except by long journeys on horseback, and accommodation for invalids could be procured only at great cost. But here an establishment of hot baths might be made very easily. It seemed at any rate to be a pity that such a provision of hot water should be wasted,-especially if it contain medicinal properties of value. We were forced to return to Worcester without trying it, as there were not means of bathing at our command. No possible medicinal properties would have atoned for the horrors of undressing within that building.

* This did not come at all from any property of the water but simply from the foulness of the place.

« PrécédentContinuer »