PIONEER MISSION WORK IN SOUTH AFRICA.
We find that as early as 1742 the first evangelical missionary went to South Africa, the devoted Schmidt, of the Moravian Church. He did some successful work, but after a time met with such opposition that he was compelled to leave, not, however, until he had baptized his first Hottentot converts, two of whom were women, the first fruits of the South African church. Some fifty years afterward the London Missionary Society sent Robert Moffat and his devoted wife, Mary. Into midnight darkness went this refined, educated young Scotch woman. It was her task to be a pioneer, to lay the foundations of woman's work, which was accomplished under untold difficulties. She must be her own cook, for none of the natives knew how to cook. If they did, they would not help her for any consideration. She must do her own washing, for none of the natives ever heard of such a thing as cleanliness, and they were far too lazy to even12learn how to wash. And her domestic work must be done with few conveniences or none, in a wattled hut with an earth floor, with not even the dream of a “kitchen.” Into this hut came one, two, or twenty native women, filling the space, prying into everything, nearly or quite naked, and leaving a daub of red or yellow ochre wherever their skin happened to touch anything. The Christian woman they regarded as a curiosity, to be laughed at, abused, or robbed, as it pleased them. When her back was turned, they all with one accord seized any article they could lay their hands on and made off with it. If she remonstrated, a stick of wood or a stone was thrown at her head. Whenever the hut was left alone, they would steal all the food and whatever else they wanted. “Hoping all things, enduring all things,” for fifty years she labored, and was permitted to see marvelous changes in the condition of South African women.—Gospel in All Lands.