"What! a parson!" quoth another. "Why, the poor fool must have lost his head." They argued the case; they mocked; they laughed; they found the subject intensely amusing. "And what, sir, do you think?" said a waiter to Schmidt, who was sitting quietly in the corner. "I am the very man," replied Schmidt; and the farmers began to talk about their crops. For six years George Schmidt laboured all alone among the benighted Hottentots. He began his labours at a military outpost in the Sweet-Milk Valley, about fifty miles east of Cape Town; but finding the company of soldiers dangerous to the morals of his congregation, he moved to a place called Bavian's Kloof, where the town of Genadendal stands to-day. He planted the pear-tree so famous in missionary annals, taught the Hottentots the art of gardening, held public service every evening, had fifty pupils in his day-school, and began to baptize his converts. As he and William, one of his scholars, were returning one day from a visit to Cape Town, they came upon a brook, and Schmidt asked William if he had a mind to be baptized there and then. He answered "Yes." And there, by the stream in a quiet spot, the first fruit of African Missions made his confession of faith in Christ. "Dost thou believe," asked Schmidt solemnly, "that the Son of God died on the cross for the sins of all mankind? Dost thou believe that thou art by nature a lost and undone creature? Wilt thou renounce the devil and all his works? Art thou willing, in dependence on God's grace, to endure reproach and persecution, to confess Christ before all men, and to remain faithful to him unto death?" As soon, however, as Schmidt began to baptize his converts the Cape Town clergy denounced him as a heretic, and summoned him to answer for his sins. The great charge against him was that he had not been properly ordained. He had been ordained, not by actual imposition of hands, but by a certificate of ordination, sent out to him by Zinzendorf. To the Dutch clergy this was no ordination at all. What right, said they, had a man to baptize who had been ordained in this irregular manner? He returned to Holland to fight his battle there. And he never set foot on African soil again! The whole argument about the irregular ordination turned out to be a mere excuse. If that argument had been genuine the Dutch clergy could now have had Schimdt ordained in the usual way. But the truth is they had no faith in his mission; they had begun to regard the Brethren as dangerous heretics; and, therefore, for another fifty years they forbade all further mission work in the Dutch Colony of South Africa.