Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/109

Rh males, who took consorts from the first cross and so obtained a preponderance of blood, or the newly formed race would not long have remained fertile. They must have been like the Griquas of modern times, who were originally half Hottentots, and who die out speedily if they intermarry only among themselves, but who have often large families if they take consorts of either of the races from which they have sprung.

How long these mixed breeds remained in Somaliland, and what caused them at length to leave that locality cannot be stated, but in all probability they were driven out by the arrival there of people more powerful than themselves. The date of their removal must have been earlier than the occupation of Central Africa by Bantu tribes, for they could not have passed through a region inhabited by any other people than Bushmen, especially as they had horned cattle and sheep with them. Their route was south-westward to the region of the great lakes, but whether they tarried at any place or places on the way, there are no means of ascertaining. Nor can it be even conjectured how long they remained at this new home, though probably it was a period of many centuries.

While they were there the Bantu tribes were increasing in the north and pushing their way down the continent, until they too reached the lake region, and then the Hottentots were compelled to move again. They were acquainted with the use of copper and iron, and were better armed than the Bushmen in advance of them, but they were too few in number to hold their own against the stalwart black men who had now come in contact with them. They had not the energy and alertness of the Bushmen either, for their mode of existence as herdsmen did not need the exercise of those qualities. Thus it is not likely that their resistance was protracted, if indeed they made any resistance at all. Before them the country was open, that is it had no other inhabitants than the pygmy aborigines, so they set out in quest of a place where they could live in safety. It is this point of their history that tradition reaches back to.

They turned their faces to the south-west. Eastward they could not go, because in that direction the Bantu were pressing