Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/155

 CAPE COLONY. 117 Hottentots, are really of mixed detcent ; but to them may alflo be added the 80,540 recogniBed half-castes returned by the same census. Those settled in the eastern districts are for the most part Gooaquas (Gonii- kwa), that is to say, •* Borderers," the issue of crossings with the KuHrs. The Griquas (Gri-kwa), who since the beginning of the present century have dwelt north of the Orange, are most commonly designated by the name of " Bastaards," a name, however, which they themselves accept with pride as testifying to their relationship with the whites. They are said on the whole to resemble their Hottentot mothers far more than their European fathers. Since the beginning of the century such alliances between Boers and natives have been legally forbidden, their tendency being gradually to absorb the white in the yellow element. In no African region have the Christian missionaries been more zealous and more successful than in Cape Colony. So early as the year 1736 the Moravian Brethren were already at work in the midst of the Hottentots, and since then some fifteen other religious societies have sent their representatives by the hundre<l t<» evangelise the same people, as well as their Bushman and Bechuana neighbours. At present nearly 200,000 natives in Cape Colony, and about 350,000 in the whole of Austral Africa south of the Zambese, profess the Christian religion.* The pre- ponderance of the European element will certainly have the result of increasing the intermingling of the races, and of causing a continually increasing number of half-breeds to be classed with the whites. Thus Cape Colony contrasts favourably with the British Australasian possessions, or at least with Tasmania, where the English settlers solved the native question by the simple process of extermination. In Austral Africa the aborigines, either more numerous or more energetic, have been better able to defend themselves. The white intruders also, arriving at intervals in small groups, and belonging to various nations, differing in origin, speech, and usages, have not been always in a position to apply themselves methodically, like those of Tasmania, to make a clean sweep of the original owners of the land. During the two hundred and tifty years of their political supremacy they have gradually succeeded in accommodating themselves to the altered con- ditions so far as to tolerate the existence of the original masters of the land, even to a certain extent blending with them in a new nationalit}', in which are mingled the white elements of Europe with the yellow of Africa. '^ J. Carlyle, South Africa and it$ Mitionary Field*.