Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/460

 ment is patriarchal, and the privileges of rank are carefully maintained by the chieftains. Their principal wealth and means of subsistence consist in their numerous herds of cattle. The females also cultivate pretty extensively maize, millet, water-melons, and a few other esculents; but they are decidedly a nation of herdsmen—war, hunting, barter, and agriculture being only occasional occupations.

"In their customs and traditions there seem to be indications of their having sprung, at some remote period, from a people of much higher civilization than is now exhibited by any of the tribes of Southern Africa; whilst the rite of circumcision, universally practised among them without any vestige of Islamism, and several other traditionary customs greatly resembling the Levitical rules of purification, would seem to indicate some former connexion with a people of Arabian, Hebrew, or perhaps, Abyssinian lineage. Nothing like a regular system of idolatry exists among them; but we find some traces of belief of a Supreme Being, as well as of inferior spirits, and sundry superstitious usages that look like the shattered wrecks of ancient religious institutions."

One of the first of this race, whom this amiable and excellent man encountered in South Africa, was at Bethelsdorp, the missionary settlement, and under the following circumstances:—"A Caffre woman, accompanied by a little girl of eight or ten years of age, and having an infant strapped on her back above her mantle of tanned bullock's hide. She was in the custody of a black constable, who stated that she was one of a number of female Caffres who had been made prisoners