Being asked to describe native mission work is rather like being asked to describe children. Each mission, like each child—or like each angel—is unique. There is only one member in each species; and it is this that makes the fascination of the world. Every missionary has to build according to his own circumstances—meeting his own problem. In visiting a mission one sees what that missionary has made of those circumstances; and one is liable to think how poor it all looks, and how much better it might have been. Which is frequently perfectly true. I shudder to think what my successor here will say and think when he takes over my job some day. Yet, in fact, many such missions are almost miracles of progress—in those circumstances.

Missions may be divided into various types—like children. There is the mission in a town which has no industries, where the natives are mostly domestic servants; and there is the country mission where there are no adjacent towns and the natives are farm labourers. Both of these have a fairly settled population. There is the industrial centre mission—as in Johannesburg—where there is no country and hardly any settled population. Then there are the missions in the tribal areas, which are again quite a different order of work.

The mission I am describing is one that embraces a country town and its surrounding district. There are no important industries apart from farming—and even that is scarcely important, for the yield on the whole is poor.