360 cook's first voyage april 



hang from a girdle or belt that is adorned with 

 beads and small pieces of copper. Both men and 

 women wear necklaces, and sometimes bracelets of 

 beads ; and the women wear rings of hard leather 

 round their ancles, to defend them from the thorns, 

 with which their country every where abounds : some 

 of them have a sandal, made of wood or bark ; but 

 the greater part of them are unshod. 



To a European, their language appears to be 

 scarcely articulate ; besides which it is distinguished 

 by a very remarkable singularity. At very frequent 

 intervals, while they are speaking, they cluck with the 

 tongue against the roof of the mouth : these clucks 

 do not appear to have any meaning, but rather to 

 divide what they say into sentences. Most of these 

 Hottentots speak Dutch, without any peculiarity of 

 pronunciation. 



They are all modest, even to sheepish ness ; for 

 it was not without the greatest difficulty that we 

 could persuade any of them to dance, or even to 

 speak in their own language to each other, in our 

 presence. We did however both see them dance, 

 and hear them sing; their dances are, by turns, active 

 and sluggish to excess ; sometimes consisting of 

 quick and violent motions, with strange distortions 

 of the body, and unnatural leaps backwards and 

 forwards, with the legs crossing each other ; and 

 being sometimes so spiritless that the dancer only 

 strikes the ground first with one foot and then with the 

 other, neither changing place nor moving any other 

 part of his body : the songs also are alternately to 

 quick and slow movements, in the same extremes as 

 the dance. 



We made many enquiries concerning these people 

 of the Dutch, and the following particulars are re- 

 lated upon the credit of their report. 



Within the boundaries of the Dutch settlements, 

 there are several nations of these people, who very 

 much differ from each other in their customs and 

 manner of life : all, however, are friendly and peace- 

 able, except one clan that is settled to the eastward, 



