funds so liberally supplied, and the labours so nobly undergone, in the cause of Christianity. Whoever does not know this, should moreover refer to the Parliamentary Report of 1837, on the Aboriginal Tribes.
The limits which I have devoted to a brief history of the treatment of these tribes by the European nations have been heavily pressed upon by the immense mass of our crimes and cruelties, and I must now necessarily make a hasty march across the scenes here alluded to; but enough will be seen to arouse astonishment, and indicate the necessity of counter-agencies of the most impulsive kind.
The Dutch have been applauded by various historians for the justice and mildness which they manifested towards the natives of their Cape colony. This may have been the case at their first entrance in 1652, and until they had purchased a certain quantity of land for their new settlement with a few bottles of brandy and some toys. It was their commercial policy, in the language of the old school of traders, to "first creep and then go." It was in the same assumed mildness that they insinuated themselves into the spice islands of India. Nothing, however, is more certain than that in about a century they had possessed themselves of all the Hottentot territories, and reduced the Hottentots themselves to a state of the most abject servitude. The Parliamentary Report just alluded to, describes the first governor, Van Riebeck, in the very first year of the settlement, looking over the mud-walls of his fortress on "the cattle of the natives, and wondering at the ways of Providence that could bestow such very fine gifts on heathens." It also presents us with two very characteristic extracts from his journal at this moment.
