Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/137

Rh disgusting to Europeans, but was unobserved by themselves. Their dwellings swarmed with vermin, which were not taken much notice of, and were only kept down by the frequent removal of the mat huts to clean ground. The greasing of their persons prevented that annoyance from vermin which to civilised people would have been unendurable, and besides from constant exposure without clothing their skins were tougher than ours.

They enjoyed eating food that would have turned the stomach of the least delicate of Europeans, for the sense of smelling with them—as with all people of a low type—was extremely dull. Thus in the accounts of early voyagers we read of their feasting upon the putrid flesh of seals, which the sailors could not venture near, and as late as 1860 some of those on the coast of Great Namaqualand were found by a party of men from one of the guano islands to be living upon a whale that had drifted ashore, and that the visitors were obliged to keep at a distance.

Still the Hottentots were not without good qualities. Their tempers were in general mild, and their hospitality to peaceable strangers as well as to individuals of their own clan was unbounded. Instances of strong affection between near relatives, such as father and daughter, before their habits became changed by contact with Europeans, are found in the early records of the Cape Colony and in the writings of missionaries. Even in the direst extremity of famine, cannibalism was never resorted to by people of their race.

They were in the habit of abandoning aged and helpless persons—even their own parents,—as well as sickly and deformed children, whom they usually left in some lonely place and allowed to die of hunger. But they regarded this as mercy, not as cruelty. In their opinion it was better for the sufferers themselves that a helpless wretch, too infirm to move about, or a cripple should give up life at once than linger on in misery. For the same reason, when a woman giving suck to an infant too young to care for itself died, the child was buried with its parent. When a woman gave