colony of the Cape alone possesses eighteen. Here too are found the largest that exists, the eland, (oreas,) six feet high, and the smallest, the pigmy, or royal antelope, (pygmæa,) little more than six inches. The spring-bok, or leaping antelope, (pygarga,) may be met with in incredible multitudes, a single herd not unfrequently amounting to five thousand, and even more, when collecting to migrate from one part of the country to another. This part of Africa too abounds with the most powerful and most ferocious beasts of prey, as the lion, the leopard, the panther, and various species of the tiger-cat; but it is not infested with the striped tiger of India. The wolf, the hyena, and three or four species of jackalls are every where to be found. The myrmecophaga, or ant-eater, the iron-hog or crested porcupine, the viverra, which burrows in the ground, are equally common, as are also the dipus, or jerboa, nearly allied to the kangaroo, and several species of hares. In the woods and thickets are buffaloes; and the plains behind the snowy mountains abound with that beautiful animal the zebra, with the stronger and more elegantly shaped quacha, and whole herds of the singular gnoo, which is described as partaking of the nature of the ox, the horse, the antelope and the stag. 1 Numerous as the quadrupeds already known and described are n this portion of Africa, there is reason to believe that many others still remain to be discovered. In the short distance between the Orange River and Leetako, in the Boshuana country, Truter and Somerville procured four new species of animals. 1. The jeckloa, a very large species of rhinoceros, with two horns of nearly equal Jength. 2. The pallah, a species of antelope, somewhat resembling the spring-bok in the shape of its body and horns, but larger. 3. The takheitse, or wild creature, so named from its ferocity, though apparently partaking of the cow and the antelope. And 4. the kokoon, a large species of gnoo, from which, however, it differs essentially, by having a long flowing black inane, instead of one erect and trimmed, as is the case with the common gnoo; it is represented as having neither the speed nor the fierceness of the latter. Accurate drawings of all these have been made by Mr. Daniell. From so many animals partaking, some of a double, and others a treble nature, it is not surprising that the ancients should have supposed that newly created species were perpetually springing up in Africa. 'Africa hæc maximè spectat, inopia aquarum ad paucos amnes congregantibus se feris. Ideo multiformes ibi animaTium partus, variè foeminis cujusque generis mares aut vi aut voluptate miscentes. Unde etiam vulgare Græciæ dictum, semper aliquid novi Africam afferre.' Thus, according to Pliny's theory, the samelopardalis was the offspring of the panther and the camel; the leopard, leopard, of the panther and the lion, and the hartebeest (antelope bubalis) of the buffalo and the antelope, &c. Later ages have detected the fallacy of this theory; we now know that, if a hybrid be sometimes produced, there the power of propagation ceases. In the mountains of the Cape are numerous troops of that disgusting animal the dog-faced baboon, (simia cynocephalus) of whose systematic dexterity in robbing orchards Kolben has invented so many ridiculous stories, all of which Mr. Lichtenstein believes to be true, though somewhat exaggerated.' However humiliating to the human species, it cannot be denied that man forms the connecting link in the great chain of creation with the monkey tribe; and it is in this part of Africa where we shall probably find that variety of the species which comes nearest in contact with the ourang-outang. From this creature the miserable Bosjesman is scarcely otherwise distinguished than by his want of a hairy covering, and by possessing the organs of speech, which, however, he hardly knows how to use. The Bosjesman race,' says Mr. Lichtenstein, p. 56, is a tribe of savage Hottentots'-' they are not Hottentots,' says Mr. Lichtenstein, in page 116, they are, and ever have been, a distinct people, having their own peculiar language, and their own peculiar customs, if the terms language and customs can be applied to a people upon the very lowest step in the order of civilization.' We know perfectly well that they are Hottentots, and as Mr. Lichtenstein saw only an old woman and two men of this tribe, and all these within sight of the Table mountain, and has evidently not made up his mind on the subject, we must look to our own shelves for a sketch of these extraordinary beings. Neither Bartholomew Diaz, who first discovered, nor Vasco de Gama, who first doubled, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other Portugueze navigator down to 1509, had much communication. with the natives. In this year Francisco d'Almeyda, viceroy of India, returning home after his quarrel with Albuquerque, landed at Saldanha Bay, (now Table Bay,) and, in a scuffle with the natives, was killed, with about seventy of his people. To avenge his death, a Portugueze captain, three years afterwards, is said to have. landed a piece of ordnance, loaded with grape shot, as a pretended present to the Hottentots. Two ropes were attached to this engine; the Hottentots poured down in swarms; men, women, and children flocked round the fatal present like the Trojans round the wooden horse, funemque manu contingere gaudent.' The brutal Portugueze fired off the piece, and viewed, with savage delight, the mangled carcases of the deluded people. The Dutch were more prudent and more politic in their advances to the natives. They found them in possession of vast berds herds of cattle, and discovered their irresistible propensity for brandy and tobacco, which they took care to gratify, till all the neighbouring tribes had been stript of their only means of subsis-. tence, and reduced to the hard condition of guarding those herds and flocks of the new settlers which, but a little before, were their own property. Those tribes have long since disappeared, and we should now look in vain for a vestige of the Attaquas, Hessaquas, Houtiniquas, &c. in those districts of the colony which still bear their names. The Namaquas on the southern, and the Damaras and Koranas on the northern, bank of the Orange River are the only remaining tribes lingering on the skirts of the colony. Whether the Bosjesmans existed before the breaking up of the Hottentots, or in consequence of it, we can only conjecture; but that they are the real genuine unmixed Hottentots admits of no doubt. Hunger and cold, and every species of privation and distress, have cramped their growth, and dwindled them down to a stature the most diminutive probably of the whole human race; the middle size of the men being about four feet six inches, and of the other sex four feet; many are several inches below this standard. They are hideously ugly in shape and feature; the outline of the face triangular and concave; the cheek bones high; the chin sharp and prominent; the nose flat; the lips thick; the eye obliquely placed in the head, narrow, sunk, keen, and always in motion; the colour that of a withered tobacco leaf, concealed by a coating of dirt and grease, excepting in places where it may happen to be pealed off; their legs, thighs, and arms, are lean and withered, divested of all appearance of muscle; the joints large, and the belly protuberant; a Bosjesman is a true Pinch-a needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch, a living dead man.' His language is scarcely human, chiefly monosyllabic, and almost every syllable is forced out with a remarkable clacking of the tongue against the teeth or palate. This strange noise, which sounds like hot or tot, may probably have been the origin of the name conferred on them by the Dutch, by the frequent remark that every thing with them was hot-en-tot. The clothing of the men consists of the raw skin of a sheep, or goat, or antelope, to which the women add a belt of the same material; and to this is appended in front another piece of skin cut into narrow thongs, and affording but a partial covering to what they appear but little careful to conceal. They sometimes wear round their ankles twisted thongs of skin; bits of copper, or shells or glass beads round the neck, or dangling from the curling tufts of their greasy hair-hair, unlike that of any other human being, growing in little detached pellets on the scalp. Every Bosjesman carries a small bow with a quiver on his back filled filled with poisoned arrows; these, when he sallies forth to fight or plunder, are stuck in a fillet of skin round the head; and he has generally thrust through the cartilage of his nose a piece of wood or a porcupine quill. If he is successful in carrying off any part of the cattle belonging to the colonists, the poor animals are hacked and tortured and deprived of life with savage cruelty. The whole horde feasts on the carcases, surrounded by kites and vultures and the great carrion crow; and these birds are not unfrequently the means of discovering their retreats to the farmers. Failing in their attempts to plunder, they set out in parties to pursue the larger kinds of game; some drive them into narrow defiles, where others lie in wait to strike them with their poisoned arrows; and an animal once hit rarely escapes their indefatigable pursuit. Sometimes these animals are taken by digging holes in the ground and covering them with earth and grass. When all endeavours fail, they have recourse to the eggs or larvæ of ants, locusts, caterpillars, and other insects, with various kinds of bulbous and tuberous roots, mostly of a pungent and austere taste. When the rains have ceased, and the spring set in, they dance round a ring for several successive nights, tear their skin covering in pieces, and throw the fragments in the air. The house of a Bosjesman is easily carried about with him. It is nothing more than a mat of rushes or long grass, bent between two sticks into a semicircular shape over a hollow in the ground, scooped out like the nest of the ostrich, in which he coils himself round when he lies down to sleep, like most of the quadrupeds; frequently his only abode is the shelter afforded by the rocks or caverns of the mountains. Linnæus has characterized the Hottentots as monorchides. They are not so by nature, though this kind of mutilation was unquestionably very commonly practised throughout the whole of the Hottentot nation. Frequent instances were seen among the Koranas by Truter and Somerville, and Kolben describes the process as an eye witness. This man, however, is rarely entitled to credit in any thing which he relates. No plausible conjecture has yet been offered as to the origin of this extraordinary race of men, whose existence is confined to a narrow corner of Africa. Barrow has supposed a close resemblance in the shape of the face, and particularly in the eye, to the Chinese or Tartar countenance. The early Portugueze writers mention a colony of Chinese in the neighbourhood of Soffala, and the natives of the interior of the great island of Madagascar are described in their stature, colour, and countenance, as a small race of Tartars resembling the Hottentots. Others have compared their manners and persons to the Pigmies and Troglodytes. Kolben as * serts that they have a tradition (a tradition indeed!) of having been thrust upon the Cape promontory out of a narrow passage; and that as a narrow passage may either signify a door-way or a window, it could be no other than the window of Noah's ark out of which they crept; and this conjecture, he thinks, is almost reduced to a certainty by the circumstance of Noah's sons being fond of dancing, which is also a favourite amusement of the Hottentots. Kolben, like Lichtenstein, was a German doctor in physic and philosophy.' The boors of the Cape go a little higher in their account of the origin of the Hottentots, whose descent they derive immediately from Cain, whose mark they say the women still carry about them; and this they assign as an authority for lifting their hands against them.' Bordering on the colony to the eastward, and in close contact with the Bosjesman Hottentots, is a race of men as little resembling them as the English resemble the Esquimaux. No two beings can differ more widely than the Hottentot and the Caffre. Thus, in that endless variety in which nature seems to have delighted more particularly in Africa, we discover in the human species the same extremes of beauty and ugliness, of symmetry and deformity, of high and low stature, which we have noticed to exist in other parts of the vegetable and animal creation. A Caffre is rarely to be met with under five feet eight inches in height; the middle size is close upon six feet, and instances of men approaching to the height of seven feet are not uncommon. They are well made and remarkably muscular; the joints of the body small and well turned; they are erect in their gait, and graceful in their motions; the colour of some approaches nearly to black, but is generally that of a true bronze; and so hard and firm are the muscular parts of the body that the lights may be seen to play on their naked limbs just as we catch them on a bronze statue. The head and features nearly resemble those of Europeans, with the exception of the lips, which are generally a little thickened, and the nose sometimes, but very rarely, somewhat flattened at the point. The head is covered with short curling hair, but not woolly like that of the African negro. The skull of the Caffre,' says Mr. Lichtenstein, is highly arched and well formed, his eye is lively, his nose not flat but sufficiently prominent, and his teeth of the most brilliant whiteness. They hold themselves exceedingly upright; their step is quick and dignified; their whole exterior denotes strength and spirit.' (p. 251.) From the concurring testimony of travellers we may rather consider the Caffres as a half-civilized than as a savage race of men. That particular tribe, bordering on the Cape colony to the eastward, is named Koossas, and the country which they inhabit Am makosina. |