According to De Mist, the provision of more churches and better schools for the Boers was necessary to gradually develop the "savage Boers" who treated the "natives so inhumanly cruel" into well-disposed, civilized individuals.[249] To his credit, De Mist, as well as Janssens, made a tour through the eastern frontier regions to gain a better understanding of the Boers and the situation there. They found the region devastated. Hundreds of farms and homesteads were burnt down, and large numbers of livestock were plundered by the Xhosas. The Xhosas moved uncontrollably through large parts of the
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