Many hundreds of both Griquas and Bechuanas have become Christians and partially civilized through the teaching of English missionaries.  My first impressions of the progress made were that the accounts of the effects of the Gospel among them had been too highly colored.  I expected a higher degree of Christian simplicity and purity than exists either among them or among ourselves.  I was not anxious for a deeper insight in detecting shams than others, but I expected character, such as we imagine the primitive disciples had—­and was disappointed.* When, however, I passed on to the true heathen in the countries beyond the sphere of missionary influence, and could compare the people there with the Christian natives, I came to the conclusion that, if the question were examined in the most rigidly severe or scientific way, the change effected by the missionary movement would be considered unquestionably great.

* The popular notion, however, of the primitive Church is perhaps not very accurate.  Those societies especially which consisted of converted Gentiles—­men who had been accustomed to the vices and immoralities of heathenism—­were certainly any thing but pure.  In spite of their conversion, some of them carried the stains and vestiges of their former state with them when they passed from the temple to the church.  If the instructed and civilized Greek did not all at once rise out of his former self, and understand and realize the high ideal of his new faith, we should be careful, in judging of the work of missionaries among savage tribes, not to apply to their converts tests and standards of too great severity.  If the scoffing Lucian’s account of the impostor Peregrinus may be believed, we find a church probably planted by the apostles manifesting less intelligence even than modern missionary churches.  Peregrinus, a notoriously wicked man, was elected to the chief place among them, while Romish priests, backed by the power of France, could not find a place at all in the mission churches of Tahiti and Madagascar.

We can not fairly compare these poor people with ourselves, who have an atmosphere of Christianity and enlightened public opinion, the growth of centuries, around us, to influence our deportment; but let any one from the natural and proper point of view behold the public morality of Griqua Town, Kuruman, Likatlong, and other villages, and remember what even London was a century ago, and he must confess that the Christian mode of treating aborigines is incomparably the best.

The Griquas and Bechuanas were in former times clad much like the Caffres, if such a word may be used where there is scarcely any clothing at all.  A bunch of leather strings about eighteen inches long hung from the lady’s waist in front, and a prepared skin of a sheep or antelope covered the shoulders, leaving the breast and abdomen bare:  the men wore a patch of skin, about the size of the crown of one’s hat, which barely served for the purposes of decency,