as I have much encouragement in it....  On the Monday evening, also, my sister and I hold a practising class for the purpose of trying to improve the singing.  On Tuesday evening I meet male inquirers, on Wednesday, before the service, I have a Bible class for women, on Thursday we have an English prayer meeting, and on Friday evening I meet female inquirers.  I need not mention the school conducted by my sister and three native assistants.”

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.