Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/498

440 them from the thorns with which the country everywhere abounds. Under their feet some wore a kind of sandal of wood or bark, but the greater number went entirely unshod. For bodily qualifications they were strong, and appeared nimble and active in a high degree.

Their language, which appears to a European but indistinctly articulated, has this remarkable singularity, that in pronouncing a sentence they click or cluck with their tongues at very frequent intervals, so much so that these clicks do not seem to have any particular meaning, except possibly to divide words, or certain combinations of words. How this can be effected, unless they can click with their tongues without inspiring their breath, appears mysterious to a European: and yet I am told that many of the Dutch farmers understand and speak their language very fluently. Almost all the natives, however, speak Dutch, which they do without clicking their tongues, or any peculiarity whatever.

In general they have more false shame (mauvaise honte) than any people I have seen, which I have often had occasion to experience when I have with the greatest difficulty persuaded them to dance or even to speak to each other in their own language in my presence. Their songs and dances are in extremes; some tolerably active, consisting of quick music and brisk motions, generally of distortions of the body with unnatural leaps, crossing the legs backwards and forwards, etc.; others again as dull and spiritless as can be imagined. One dance consists entirely of beating the earth first with one foot and then with the other, without moving their place at all, to the cadence of a tune furnished with little more variety than the dance.

Smoking is a custom most generally used among them, in doing which they do not, as the Europeans do, admit the smoke no farther than their mouths, but like the Chinese suck it into their lungs, where they keep it for nearly a minute before they emit it. They commonly mix with their tobacco the leaves of hemp, which they cultivate for that purpose, or Phlomis leonurus, which they call dacha. Their food is the same as that of the farmers, chiefly bread