Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/324

312 312 HOTTENTOTS employed. 1 There was also a belief that in every fountain there was a snake, and that as long as the snake remained there water would continue to flow, but that if the snake was killed or left the fountain it would cease. Offerings were sometimes made to the spirit of the fountain. Like all people sunk in barbarism, the Hottentots had great faith in witch-doctors, or sorcerers. When called to a sick bed, these ordered the patient to lie on his back, and then pinched, cuffed, and beat him all over until they expelled the illness. After that they produced a bone, small snake, frog, or other object which they pretended to have extracted from the patient s body. If the treatment did not prove efficacious, the person was declared bewitched beyond the power of any one to cure him. Sometimes a joint of a finger was cut off from the idea that the disease would thereby pass away. If death occurred, the corpse was interred on the day of decease. It was wrapt in skins, and placed in the ground in the same position it cnce occupied in the mother s womb. Death was generally regarded in a very stoical manner. Language. The Hottentot language was regarded by the early travellers and colonists as an uncouth and barbarous tongue. The Portuguese called the native manner of speaking stammering ; and the Dutch compared it to the &quot;gobbling of a turkey-cock.&quot; These phonetic characteristics arose from the common use of &quot; clicks,&quot; sounds produced by applying the tongue to the teeth or to various parts of the gums or roof of the mouth, and suddenly jerking it back. Three-fourths of the syllabic elements of the language begin with these clicks, and combined with them are several hard and deep gutturals and nasal accompaniments. The difficulty a European has in acquiring an accurate pronunciation is not so much in pro ducing the clicking sound singly as in following it immediately with another letter or syllable. The four recognized clicks, with the symbols generally adopted to denote them, are as follows: Dental = | ; palatal = :| ; lateral = || ; cerebral = !. According to Tindall, one of the best grammarians of the language, the dental click (similar to a sound of surprise or indignation) is produced by pressing the top of the tongue against the upper front teeth, and then suddenly and forcibly withdrawing it. The palatal click (like the crack of a whip) is produced by pressing the tongue with as flat a surface as possible against the termination of the palate at the gums, so that the top of the tongue touches the upper front teeth and the back of the tongue lies towards the palate, and then forcibly withdrawing the tongue. The cerebral click (compared to the popping of the cork of a bottle of champagne) is produced by curling up the tip of the tongue against the roof of the palate, and withdrawing it suddenly and forcibly. The lateral click (similar to the sound used in stimulating a horse to action) is articulated by covering with the tongue the whole of the palate and producing the sound as far back as possible ; European learners imitate it by placing the tongue against the side teeth and then withdrawing it. The easiest Hottentot clicks, the dental and cerebral, have been adopted by the Kaffres ; and it is a striking circumstance, in evidence of the past Hottentot influence upon the Kafl re languages, that the clicking decreases amongst these tribes almost in propor tion to their distance from the former Hottentot domain. The language in its grammatical structure is beautiful and regular. Dr Bleek describes it as having the distinctive features of the suffix-pronominal order or higher form of languages, in which the pronouns are identical with and borrowed from the derivative suffixes of the nouns. The words are mostly mono syllables, always ending, with two exceptions, in a vowel or nasal sound. Among the consonants neither I, f, nor v are found. Then; are two r/ s, &amp;lt;j hard and g guttural, and a deeper guttural kh. Diphthongs abound. There is no article, but the definite or indefinite sense of a noun is determined by the gender. In the fullest known dialect (that spoken by the Namaqua) nouns are formed with eight different suffixes, which in nouns designating persons distinguish inasc. sing, (-b), masc. plur. (-kit), masc. dual (fc/ui), fern. sing, (-s), fern. plur. (-ti), com. sing. (-? ), com. plur. (-u), com. dual The adjective is either prefixed to a noun or referred to it by a suffixed pronoun. This grammatical division of the nouns according to gender led to the classification of the 1 If a Khoi-Khoi went out hunting his wife kindled a fire, and assiduously watched by it to keep it alive ; if the lire should be extinguished her husband would not be lucky. If she did not make a fire, she went to the water and kept on throwing it about on the ground, believing that thereby her husband would be successful in igetting game. Charms, consisting of bones, burnt wood, and roots of particular shrubs cut into small pieces, were generally worn round the neck. language as &quot; sex-denoting,&quot; thus suggesting if not identifying its relationship, in original structure, with the North-African species of the same family, such as the Coptic and Old Egyptian, Galla, Berberic, Houssa, Ethiopia, and others. There are four dialectical varieties of the language, each with well-marked characteristics : the Narna dialect, spoken by the Namaqua as well as by the Hau-Koin or Hill Damaras, a supposed Bantu or negro people who in some past period were compered and enslaved by the Namaquas ; the Kora dialect, spoken by the Korannas, or Koraquas, dwelling about the middle and upper part of the Orange, Vaal, and Modder Rivers ; the Eastern dialect,, spoken by the Gona or Gonaquas on the borders of Kaff reland ; and the Cape dialect, now no longer spoken but preserved in the records of early voyagers and settlers. Of these dialects the Nama is the purest. It is described in three grammars : Wallmann (1857) and Halm s in German, and Tindall s (1871) in English, the last being the best ; and the four Gospels, with a large amount of missionary literature, have been published in it. This dialect is commonly spoken by a native population of not less than 100,000 souls south and north of the Orange river, and in parts of Damaraland (or Hereroland) and the Kaokoveld. The vocabulary is not limited merely to the expression of the rude conceptions that are characteristic of primitive races. Jt possesses such words as koi, human being ; khoi-si, kindly or friendly ; koi-si-b, philanthropist ; khoi-si-s, humanity ; jfc ei, to think ; ~. ei-s, thought ; amo, eternal ; amo-si-b, eternity ; tsa, to feel ; tsa-b, feeling, sentiment ; tsa-kha, to condole ; ama, true ; ama-b, the truth ; anu, sacred ; anu-si-b, holiness ; csa, pretty ; anu-xa, full of beauty. A considerable mass of floating traditionary literature fables. Folk! myths, and legends exists amongst the Khoi-Khoin, a i act which was first made known by Sir James Alexander, who in his journeyings through Great Namaqualand in 1835 jotted down the stories told him around the camp fire by his Hottentot followers. Since then missionaries and officials stationed in the country have made collections of them, and the result has been an unlooked for mine of literary lore among a nation whose mental qualifications it was customary to regard as of a very low grade. These Hottentot tales generally have much of the character of fables ; some are in many points identical wilh northern nursery tales, and suggestive of European origin or of contact with the white man ; but the majority bear evidence of being true native products. Bleek s Ecynardthe Fox in South Africa (1864) contains a translation of a legend written down from the lips of the Namaquas by the Rev. G. Kronlein, which is regarded as an excellent specimen of the national style. Another legend relating to the moon and the hare conveys the idea of an early conception of the hope of im mortality. It is found in various versions, and, like many other stories, occurs in Bushman as well as in Hottentot mythology. The supposed affinity of the Hottentot with the North African Ethno nations was first guessed at by the Rev. Dr Moifut from the resem- grapli; blance between the language of the Namaquas and that of some relatk slaves in the market of Cairo. This relationship was afterwards suggested by the Rev. Dr James Adamson, of Cape Town, from, the identity of the signs of gender in Namaqua and Coptic, and. the appearance of persons of the Hottentot form and colour, with their grease and sibilo dye, among the representations on Nubian tombs. Then came Dr Bleek s philological researches, showing that the Hottentot language from the sexual gender of its nouns was one of the very extensive &quot;sex-denoting&quot; family which has spread itself over North Africa, Europe, and part of Asia, and that it moreover surpassed all the otheis in a faithful preservation of the primitive type. This association of the language of the people of South Africa with that of their northern cousins promised to solve the problem of their pedigree and ancestry, for it at once suggested and implied early migrations of Hottentot and Bushmen from their primal home, and the intrusion upon them at some time or other of the Bantu or negroid tribes, who probably came from the west and drove the Hottentots on the eastern side of Africa southward before them. But the assumed kinship of the Old Egyptians and Hottentots has been disputed by other eminent authorities, such as Von Gabelentz, Pott, Er. Miiller, and Halm, who have pronounced against it on ethnological and philological grounds. Halm stoutly maintains that the Hottentots and Bush men are but divisions of a single race &quot;the children of the same mother&quot; who formed the primeval inhabitants of the whole of South Africa as far as the Zambe/i. 3 The earliest accounts which we have of the Hottentots occur in His tor the narratives of Vasco da Gama s first voyage to India round the Cape in 1497. They are described as small, of a brownish yellow complexion, and an ugly appearance ; they freely bartered their sheep, but would not part with their cattle, on which the women 2 See the linguistic part of Dr Fr. Miiller s work on the scientific results of the Novara expedition, and Halm s contributions on the Hottentots in the Proceedings of the Geographical Society (Dresden, 1869) and in Globus (1870), and his Sprachc der JVavia (Leipsiq,