Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/100

 74 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. twenty thousand, of whom nearly seventeen thousrnd are Great Namaquas, and the rest Little Namaquas. The Namas are certainly Hottentots, and were at one time regarded as the purest representatives of that race. Those known as the " Red Nation," that is, the Geikus of the hilly region lying to the south-east of Walvisch Bay, are Khoin, or Hottentots, in a pre-eminent sense, and claim to have been the first conquerors of this district, where they number about two thousand five hundred. The so- called Topnaars, that is, " Highest," or " First," who are centred for the most part in the British enclave round about Walvisch Bay, are at present in a very degraded state, being regarded as the most debased of all the Namaquas. Others again, and notably the Oerlams, whose original name of Orang Lami, or " Old Acquaint- ance," is said to have been given them by the sailors visiting them from the Cape, are of more or less mixed descent, a strain of European blood having even been detected in them. All are herdsmen and warriors, who during the course of the present century have fought many a desperate battle with the Hereros. ]) welling in semicircular huts made of bark and foliage, they practise only such rudimentary industries as are suitable to their primitive manner of life. They cut up and dress the hides of their cattle, sharpen and mount smallarms, and make wooden bowls for holding milk and spring-water. Constantly moving about in search of good pasturage, the Great Namaquas are grouped in separate clans, each with its own chief and council of twelve elders. The more illustrious his lineage and the more brilliant his warlike deeds, the greater is the personal authority of the tribal chief. But these kinglets, having become nominal Christians, are gradually losing their influence over their subjects, especially since their territory has been surrounded by the Cape Colonists and the Boors from the east, and since their upland valleys are regularly visited by the wholesale dealers to buy up thoir live-stock, and by the German miners to " prospect " their country for mineral ores. They are no longer dreaded for the number of their armed warriors, but respected only in proportion to their wealth in cattle. The race itself seems doomed to extinction, being too feeble to resist the elements of disintegration by which it is surrounded. The Little Namaquas no longer speak Hottentot ; the missionaries established among the Great Namaqu;js no longer require to learn this language, which since the year 1882 has ceased to be the vehicle of religious instruction. It is no longer necessary to print books of devotion in an idiom which will soon be understood by nobody, and which has already been replaced by Diitch, one of the channels through which civilisation is being diffused throughout South Africa. Naina, which is one of the purest forms of Hottentot, is thus disappearing like other branches of the same linguistic family, of which nothing now survives, except the names of mountains and rivers, nearly all in more or less corrupt form. The fragments of the Nama tribes scattered over the eastern plains are becoming gradually merged with the despised Bushmen.