VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



1343 



difficult to say, but a more wretched-looking 

 set of beings cannot easily be imagined. The 

 average height of the men is considerably 

 under five feet, that of the women little ex- 

 ceeding four. Their shameless state of nearly 

 complete nudity, their brutalized habits of 

 voracity, filth, and cruelty of disposition, ap- 

 pear to place them completely on a level with 

 the brute creation, whilst the ' clicking ' tones 

 of a language, composed of the most unpro- 

 nounceable and discordant noises, more re- 

 semble the jabbering of apes than sounds 

 uttered by human beings."* 



Now, there is ample evidence that the Cape 

 Bushmen are a degraded caste of the Hotten- 

 tot race. They agree with the Hottentots in 

 all the peculiarities of physiognomy, cranial 

 conformation, c., by which the latter arc cha- 

 racterised; and a careful comparison of the 

 languages of the two races has shown that 

 there is an essential affinity between them. 

 It has been ascertained by Dr. Andrew Smith, 

 that many of the Bushman hordes vary their 

 speech designedly, by affecting a singular 

 mode of utterance (employing the peculiar 

 clapping or clicking of the tongue, which is 

 characteristic of the Hottentot language, so 

 incessantly, that they seem to be giving utter- 

 ance to a jargon consisting of an uninterrupted 

 succession of claps), and even adopting new 

 words, in order to make their meaning unin- 

 telligible to all but the members of their own 

 community. According to the same autho- 

 rity, nearly all the South African tribes who 

 have made any advances in civilisation, are 

 surrounded by more barbarous hordes, whose 

 abodes are in the wilderness and in the fast- 

 nesses of mountains and forests, and who con- 

 stantly recruit their numbers by such fugitives 

 as crime and destitution may have driven 

 from their own more honest and thriving 

 communities. In this manner it has happened 

 that within a comparatively recent period 

 many tribes of Hottentots have been de- 

 graded into Bushmen, through the oppres- 

 sions to which they have been subjected at 

 the hands of their more civilised neighbours. 



Now, although of the Hottentots them- 

 selves we are accustomed to form a very low 

 estimate, our ideas of them having been 

 chiefly derived from the intercourse of the 

 Cape settlers with the tribes which have been 

 their nearest neighbours, and which have un- 

 fortunately undergone that deterioration which 

 is so often found to be the first result of the 

 contact of civilised with comparatively savage 

 nations, it appears from the accounts of 

 them given by Dutch writers at the time of 

 the first settlement of the Cape, that they 

 were a people considerably advanced in civi- 

 lisation, and possessed of many estimable 

 qualities. Their besetting sins seem to be 

 indolence and a love of drink (in this respect 

 strongly resembling the Irish) ; yet when they 

 can be induced to apply, they show no want 

 of capacity or vigour. The testimony of 



* Lieut. -Colonel E. E. Napier's Excursions iii 

 Southern Africa. 



Lieut.-Col. Napier is very strong as to their 

 merits as soldiers when officered by Euro- 

 peans ; " and it has been," he says, " on the 

 Cape Mounted Rifles, composed chiefly of this 

 race, that many of the greatest hardships, 

 fatigues, and dangers of the last ami former 

 Kaffir wars have principally fallen." * It has 

 been frequently said that the Hottentots differ 

 from the higher races, in their incapacity to 

 form or to receive religious ideas. This is, 

 however, by no means true. The early Dutch 

 settlers describe them as having a definite 

 religion of their own ; and it was their obsti- 

 nate adhesion to this, which was the real ob- 

 stacle to the introduction of Christianity 

 among them. When the attempt was per- 

 severingly made and rightly directed, the 

 Hottentot nation lent a more willing ear than 

 any other race in a similar condition has done 

 to the preaching of Christianity ; and no 

 people has been more strikingly and speedily 

 improved by its reception. 



Now, if we compare the condition of these 

 people with that of the lowest members of 

 the population of countries that claim to be 

 most advanced in civilisation, we find that the 

 difference is not so great as it might at first 

 appear. Unfortunately, there is scarcely a 

 civilised nation, in the very bosom of which 

 there does not exist an outcast population, 

 neither less reckless, nor less prone to the 

 indulgence of their worst passions, than the 

 miserable Bushmen, and only restrained from 

 breaking loose by external coercion. The 

 want of forethought and wild desire of re- 

 venge, which are said to be among the most 

 striking characteristics of the Bushmen, are 

 scarcely less characteristic of those classes 

 dangereuses, which, as often as the arm of the 

 law is paralysed, issue from the unknown 

 deserts of our great towns, and rival in their 

 excesses of wanton cruelty, the most terrible 

 exhibitions of barbarian inhumanity. So, 

 again, there is nothing in the inaptitude of 

 any barbarous tribe for religious impressions, 

 which surpasses that of the young heathens 

 of our own land, who, when first induced to 

 attend a " ragged school," are recorded to 

 have mingled " Jim Crow " with the strains of 

 adoration in which they were invited to join, 

 and to have done their best, by grimaces and 

 gestures, to distract the attention of those 

 who were fixing their thoughts on the solemn 

 offering of prayer ; or of those who, after 

 having joined with apparent sincerity in reli- 

 gious worship, simultaneously took their de- 

 parture as the hour approached for the break- 

 ing up of the city congregations, in order that 

 they might " go to work," as they expressed 

 it ; that is, that they might exert their thievish 

 ingenuity upon the dispersing crowds. Now 

 if, on the one hand, we admit the influence 

 of want, ignorance, and neglect, in accounting 

 for the debasement of the savages of our own 



* The conduct of this corps in the recent out- 

 break (March 20. 1851), is stated by the Governor 

 to have been most admirable. It was under its 

 escort alone, that he forced his way through a 

 country entirely in possession of the Kaffirs. 



