Origin and History of the Bushmen. 121 



real and presumptive proofs of their ancient existence in 

 various situations, we also find them in the present clay 

 scattered over all the deserts of Great Namaqualand and the 

 Butchuana country*, and observing there a similar line of 

 conduct towards the Hottentots, Damaras, and Gaffers, in 

 their vicinity, that those within reach of the colony do towards 

 its inhabitants. All such have certainly anything but a 

 tendency to support the opinion entertained by not a few, 

 that the tribes in question were originally called into existence 

 through the outrages of the colonists; and though I am ready 

 to admit that very great oppressions have been extended to 

 the natives by the white population, yet it is impossible to 

 allow, with such facts before us, that the latter were in any 

 way instrumental in giving origin to a peculiar community of 

 individuals, which there is every reason to believe existed long 

 before European influence approached even the confines of 

 their country. 



Though justice induces me thus to object to such a cause 

 as that assigned, yet at the same time I am quite prepared to 

 admit that the malpractices referred to by the advocates of 

 that opinion, have had doubtless considerable share in aug- 

 menting the number, believing that whatever tends to create 

 poverty, is calculated for producing and likely to produce 

 Bushmen, wherever Hottentots occur. Instead then of as- 

 cribing the origin of such to an individual, a recent and a 

 limited cause, 1 would rather venture to attribute it to influ- 

 ences which operated of old, as well as still continue to ope- 

 rate, namely, poverty and crime. The former I would re- 

 gard as having been, and as still being, the most productive ; 

 the latter as the most odious and dangerous : the first, as hav- 

 ing been, as well as being, the consequence of misfortune, but 

 more frequently of imprudence ; the last, as now and then the 

 result of accident, but more generally of mental depravity; 

 and both, as having operated and as still operating in many 

 parts of South Africa, in producing and increasing the num- 

 bers of the tribes under consideration. 



The majority of the Bushmen population, according to the 

 restricted sense in which the term is here to be understood, 

 consists of pure Hottentots; and the remainder of blacks, 

 either the offspring of an intercourse with the former and 

 other coloured persons, or else the actual outcasts of other 



* Mr. Anderson, who was some time a Missionary amongst the Corannas, 

 when speaking of a spot near the Orange River, says, " The Coronnas 

 occupied this place; they are hy no means so numerous as the Boschesman, 

 who are every where to be found from east to west in the Briqualand." 

 Transactions of the Missionary Society, vol. iii. p. 54. 



.V. 5. Vol. 9. No. 50. Feb. 1831. R races 



