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Page 42
Speaking of the place and people he continues:--
"The population is small and scattered. On the spot there must be a good
many people, and also at the villages to the north-west; but otherwise
the district contains only small villages of from twenty to one hundred
huts. It extends fifty miles west and north-west, and about twenty-five
miles in other directions.
"The people are poor and must remain so. The country is essentially dry.
Irrigation is necessary for successful agriculture, and there are few
spots where water flows. There is no market for cattle, even if they
throve abundantly, which they do not. I despair of much advance in
civilisation, when their resources are so small, and when the European
trade is on the principle of enormous profits and losses. Two hundred
per cent, on Port Elizabeth prices is not considered out of the way.
[Illustration: MAIN STREET IN PORT ELIZABETH.]
"Heathenism, as a system, is weak, indeed in many places it is nowhere.
Christianity meets with little opposition. The people generally are
prodigious Bible readers, church-goers, and psalm-singers, I fear to a
large extent without knowledge. Religion to them consists in the above
operations, and in giving a sum to the Auxiliary. I am speaking of the
generality, There are many whom I cannot but feel to be Christians, but
dimly. This can hardly be the result of low mental power alone. The
Bechwanas show considerable acuteness when circumstances call it out.
"The educational department of the Mission has been kept in the
background. On this station the youth on leaving school have sunk back
for want of a continued course being opened to them. The village
schoolmasters, uneducated themselves, and mostly unpaid, make but a
feeble impression. The wonder is that they do so much, and where the
readers come from. It is hard to say that the older missionaries could
have done otherwise.... I cannot tell you how one thing presses on me
every day: the want of qualified native schoolmasters and teachers; and
the question: how are they to be obtained?"
On Sunday, 20th March, 1870, Robert Moffat preached for the last time in
the Kuruman church, and on the Friday following the departure took
place. "Ramary" and "Mamary," as Mr. and Mrs. Moffat were called, had
completely won the hearts of the natives. For weeks past messages of
farewell had been coming from the more distant towns and villages, and
now that the final hour had arrived and the venerable missionary, with
his long white beard, and his equally revered wife, left their house and
walked to their waggon they were beset by crowds of people, each one
longing for another shake of the hand, a last parting word, or a final
look; and, as the waggon drove away, a long pitiful wail rose from those
who felt that their teacher and friend was with them no more.
After a rough but safe journey of eight weeks, Robert and Mary Moffat
reached Port Elizabeth on the 20th May, 1870, and received a hearty
welcome from a large number of missionaries and other Christian friends,
who had gathered to meet them. Making a brief stay they embarked in the
mail steamer _Roman_ and landed at Cape Town on the 2nd of June. Here
they were entertained by the Christian community at a public breakfast.
A few days later they embarked in the steamship _Norseman, en route_ for
England.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X.
CLOSING SCENES.
In the Chronicle of the London Missionary Society for March, 1870, the
following notice appeared: "Our readers will be glad to hear that there
is now a definite prospect of welcoming again to England our veteran
missionary, the Rev. Robert Moffat. He may be expected, with Mrs.
Moffat, about the month of June. Mr. Moffat no longer enjoys his former
robust health. In his last letter he writes: 'What to me was formerly a
molehill is now a mountain, and we both have for some time past begun to
feel some of the labour and sorrow so frequently experienced by those
who have passed their three-score years and ten.'"
The _Norseman_ reached Plymouth on the 24th of July, and next day Robert
and Mary Moffat landed at Southampton, thus returning to their native
land, to leave it no more, after an absence of over fifty years; during
which time they had visited it only once before.
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