Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/104



next section of the human species that claims the attention of a student of South African history is the people known to us as Hottentots. Long considered and termed aborigines by many writers, the not very remote ancestors of these people are now known to have been colonists in the same sense that the Dutch and English are, that is they came from another country and settled in those parts where they were found by the first European visitors, which localities had previously been occupied by earlier inhabitants. That this circumstance long remained unknown is a matter easy of explanation. Neither the Portuguese, nor the Dutch, nor the early English settlers took any trouble to make the necessary investigations, they were wholly occupied with other affairs, they found the Hottentots in the country, and that seemed sufficient for them to know.

Then, long before any real research was commenced, the Hottentots in those parts occupied by Europeans lost their own language and customs, and the blood of most of them became mixed with that of other races. Their traditions were forgotten, and no information of any value was to be obtained from them. At length the eminent philologist Dr. Bleek, by comparing the language of those who lived in secluded localities and retained their ancestral tongue, with the speech of sections of the inhabitants of Northern Africa, pronounced them to have close affinities. Already, in 1851, the reverend Dr. James Adamson had reported to the Syro-Egyptian Society a discovery he had made, that “the signs of gender were almost identical in the Namaqua and