Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/54

30 a half-breed Hottentot and his wife, who were born in the territory near the southern bank of the Orange river, and who spoke both the Dutch and the Bushman languages, so that they were useful as interpreters, on the 6th of July 1799 he took up his residence at a place which he named Blijde Vooruitzigt, or Joyful Prospect, on the bank of the Zak river. Being provided with a good stock of tobacco and a considerable number of oxen and sheep, presented to the mission by religious farmers, he was able to induce a large party of the wild people to listen to his teaching, and they remained with him as long as his stores lasted. In 1800, after he had been with them several months, he wrote of them as follows:

“Although they are not idolaters, the doctrine of a Supreme Being was to them entirely unknown. … Their manner of living is very horrible. Their dwelling and resting place is between the rocks, where they dig a round den of about three feet deep, in which they lie, with their whole family. This den is sometimes covered with a few reeds, to shelter them from the wind and rain, which, however, seldom answers the design, as they are generally soaked through by the first shower. They mostly lie down and sleep, except when hunger greatly torments them; then they go a-hunting; but they live many days without any food. When they find no wild beast, then they make shift with a sort of small wild onions and wild potatoes, which the women seek, but never the men. They are content to eat snakes and mice.

“Their language is so very difficult to learn that no one can spell or write the same. It consists mostly of a clicking with the tongue.

“They are total strangers to domestic happiness. The men have several wives, but conjugal affection is little known. They take no great care of their children, and never correct them except in a fit of rage, when they almost kill them by severe usage. In a quarrel between father and mother, or the several wives of a husband, the defeated party wreaks his or her revenge on the child of the conqueror, which in general loses its life. Tame Hottentots