The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1883-06-16


find the town breaks off as suddenly and
startlingly as the first chapter of serial
story Indeed, it practically consists only
of two streets, perfectly straight made
enormously broad to give the wind and dust
free play, and planted ON either side with
pert-looking little trees very much like
half-fedged chickens. 1t is one character
istic of this singular place that one seems
to be always outside of it. Before you
have walked quarter of mile in any di-
rection you find yourself stumbling amid
sand hills and thorn bushes, while from the
last house of the town, which already lies
several yards behind you, three or four
Kafirs watch your proceedings with uncon-
cealed derision. Nor, in truth, is there
much temptation to extend ones rambles
beyond this point. In the hollow where
the town lies amid its encircling hills, few
tiny gardens" any one of which might be
put bodily into barrow and trundled away,
peep out here and there from among the
houses, but upon the surrounding ridges
even the eye of special correspondent
could hardly (unless he belonged to French
journal) discover vegetation enough to fill
flower-pot The only visible shade is that
of the railway depot, standing sullenly in
a kind of perpetual quarantine on the other
side of the ''Great Fish River, as the local
maps, with cruel irony, style the little gutter
of liquid mud on the west of the town.
Nor can one wish for the rising of breeze;
for in this favored CLINE, where l 100 in the
shade is quite a comfortable average, the
wind blows hot instead of cold, with an in
tensity which have never seen paralleled
even in Egypt or Afghanistan. With its
very first puff your eyes begin to burn and
your lips to crack, your skin seems peeling
off like birch bark, every breath that you
draw appears to come straight from the
mouth of an oven, and long before your
walk is over you are living contradiction
of the courteous old Italian prOverb that
''only pig and an Englishman can face
the hot winds.
But Just as | am about to turn back
small white tower, rising above dark
green clump of leaves, catches my eye i'll
the distance Such windfall is not to be
overlooked ''In the land of the blind,
says an old adage, "the one-eyed man is
king and in South Africa two bushes and
a stone may represent wildly picturesque
landscape, just as the Valdai hillocks pass
for mountains on the dead level of Central
Russia. Here is church surrounded by
a garden. The interior of this church of
the wilderness is as meek and unpretending
as it's outside. The whitewashed walls,
the bare floor, the low wooden-latched door,
the queer little pews of worm-eaten plank
ing, with the number of each painted on it
in faded colors, are just what one might
see in any old-fashioned village church in
England or America The reading desk is
simply biscuit box covered with piece
of red flannel, and the pulpit itself had to
all appearances an almost equally humble
origin. Several tattered Dutch hymn
books are lying around, in the contents of
which [ recognize not a few Olds friends.
One of the first that catches my eye is a
translation of "Nearer, my God, to Thee"
which is easily made out. In the wall be-
hind the pulpit is tablet bearing the name
and epitaph of former pastor, who '1abor-
ed here as missionary for thirty-fve
years." 1t has become the fashion of late
years to sneer at missionaries and their
work, and it is indeed only too true that
such men as Mafat and Livingstone are
the exception rather than the rule Every
thinking man must deplore the narrow sec
tarianism which too often divides the great
brotherhood against itself, the harsh and
arbitrary tone of some of its members, the
ill-judged impetuosity of others, the want
of sympathy with the feelings and beliefs
of other races by which they so frequently
do harm instead of good. But when all
this has been admitted, the fact remains
that men can be found to give up all the
comforts of home and civilization, to settle
in regions like this or even more barbarous,
to live for years without seeing white face,
to endure poverty, sickness, pain, far away
from their own people, amid ignorant and
filthy savages, hardly removed from the
wild beasts which they hunt down. What
ever may be its results, the sacrifice itself
is nothing short of heroic and l, remem
bering how many brave men have found
laboring manfully at such work in every
part of the earth, can most heartily wish
them gOd-speed.