"They went in the year 1853. It is not likely they are all there now. But others followed them, Maggie, year after year, till now there are, I believe, between twenty and thirty stations where they are settled." "All from Hermannsburg! Ditto, it is very curious! So many years ago, Hermann's castles sent out soldiers to bring heathen Mechlenburg to the Christian religion; and now Mechlenburg gives shirts and pictures for Hermannsburg to send to other heathen in Africa." "What sort of heathen people are those they went to?" Esther asked. "Quite a good sort. Here is a description of them, written by one of the brethren who sailed in that first trip of the 'Candace':-- "'I cannot make it out how the heathen can be as they are, although they are day and night before my eyes. They are powerful, muscular men, with open faces and sparkling eyes; they all go either quite naked or with a very slight covering. A late law obliges them, however, to put a shirt on when they are going into a city. They live in houses which resemble beehives, into which you must creep. The whole stock of valuables which you find in these huts is an assaghai (javelin), a club, a mat, a bit of wood for a pillow, and a great horn for smoking. I have seen nothing else in them. The people have almost no wants. So many wives as a man has, so many huts has he also, one for each wife, and then one besides for himself. The women are bought; paid for with cows and oxen; ten and twenty oxen for a wife. These become then the man's slaves, and the man, when he has got a good many wives, hardly does any more work himself. The women must cultivate the maize and sweet potatoes, which is almost all the people live upon. Once in a while they kill an ox; and then so many come together to eat it that it is all disposed of at one meal. Our German brethren aver that ten Caffres in twenty-four hours will eat up a whole ox, skin and entrails and all, which they roast at the fire; that afterwards, however, they can go fasting four days at hard labour. They are fond of adorning themselves with coral and rings, and snuff-boxes are to be seen in the hands of both men and women. They cork up the snuff in their nostrils with a hollowed-out bit of wood, till the tears run down their cheeks. The women are so hardly used that a mother with a little five-days-old baby must go out to work in the hot sun with the baby on her back, and the father does not concern himself at all about the child. Of twins, one is almost always killed at once. In short, they are not much above the beasts in their way of life; and the worst of all is, they are almost inaccessible to the truth, and laugh at everything sacred.'" CHAPTER VIII. "Well," said Maggie, as Meredith paused, "I should think somebody ought to go to those people!" "Hopeless work," said Flora, stitching away at her worsted.