y certainly are. They are reproached
with the paucity of their converts, and that by white men whose own
treatment of the Kafirs might well make the white man's religion odious
to a native. They are also accused of abusing their position to enrich
themselves by trade with the Kafirs. This abuse has sometimes occurred,
and clearly ought to be checked by the home societies. But probably it
does not disgust the wandering white trader any more than the fact that
the missionary often warns the native against the exorbitant prices
which the trader demands for his goods. They are blamed for making the
converted Kafir uppish, and telling him that he is as good as a white
man, an offence which has no doubt been often committed. A graver
allegation, to which Mr. Theal has given some countenance in his
historical writings, is that they used to bring groundless or
exaggerated charges against the Boer farmers, and always sided with the
natives, whatever the merits of the case. I do not venture to pronounce
on the truth of this allegation, which it would take much time and
labour to sift. As there have been some few missionaries whose
demeanour was not creditable to their profession, so there have
doubtless been instances in which partisan ardour betrayed them into
exaggerations. But whosoever remembers that but for the missionaries the
natives would have lacked all local protection, and that it was only
through the missionaries that news of injustice or cruelty practised on
a native could reach the ears of the British Government, will look
leniently on the errors of honest zeal, and will rejoice that ministers
of religion were found to champion the cause of the weaker race and keep
the home Government alive to a sense of one of its first duties.

Notwithstanding the slowness of the progress hitherto made, the
extinction of heathenism in South Africa may be deemed certain, and
certain at no distant date. There is here no ancient and highly
organized system of beliefs and doctrines, such as Hinduism and Islam
are in India, to resist the solvent power which European civilisation
exerts. In forty years there will probably be no more pagan rites
practised in Cape Colony. In eighty years there will be none in
Matabililand, or perhaps even sooner, if the gold-reefs turn out well;
for though a mining-camp is not a school of Christianity, it is a
destroyer of paganism. Already I found, in traversing Mashonaland, that
the poor ghosts were cea