3— AN ETHNOGRAPHIC BUREAU FOR SOUTH AFRICA. 

 By Dr. H. Lyster Jameson. 



Systematic investigations of the native races of British South 

 Africa from the Anthropological and Ethnological standpoint, must 

 be undertaken without delay, if we are to acquire anything like an 

 extensive knowledge of these peoples. Of the three aboriginal races 

 which were in possession of the continent at the time of the first 

 European settlement, two are fast disappearing. The Bushmen have 

 been reduced to the verge of extinction by the hunts or massacres 

 organised by the early pioneers. The Hottentots (with the exception, 

 of a few thousand Namas in Namaqualand who are still comparatively 

 pure blooded, and who still speak the Hottentot language) are now 

 mostly hybridised with Europeans, or other native races, and speak 

 a degenerate Dutch " Taal," which has entirely replaced their 

 original tongue. The third race, the Bantus, the predominant element 

 in the native population of South Africa, has always been a very 

 adaptable people, .so far as we can judge from their scanty history. 

 These Bantus are now adapting themselves so quickly to European 

 dress, customs and religion, that, in another generation or two, if 

 we can judge by the course of events in the la.st quarter of a century, 

 the material for their study will be almost as scanty as that affor(ied 

 by the Bushmen. The fourth South African race, the " Kattea," 

 or " Vaalpc-ns," of the North-Eastern IVansvaal, which may prove 

 to be the nearest of all living races to the original stock from which 

 the several families of mankind are descended, will unquestionably 

 share the fate of all primitive peoples, extinction or absorption, as 

 soon as civilisation spreads northward. 



If the Ethnographical Survey of British South Africa is not 

 undertaken at once, it will find itself resolved in great measure into 

 an archaeological survey. 



So far comparatively little has been done in the field of South 

 African Ethnology. The really first-hand and original literature of 

 South African anthropology may be mastered, if we except languages 

 and philology, by the perusal of some hundred odd anthropological 

 works and books of travel. For these works we have almost entirely 

 to thank private enterprise, if we except a few investigations con- 

 ducted under the auspices of museums and scientific societies, and 

 still fewer under direct Government patronage. The most familiar 

 of the latter are the reports of the several Native Affairs Commissions, 

 whose enquiries have been undertaken for ix)litical rather than for 

 ethnological purposes, and whose results are, from the standpoint 

 of the scientific man, hardly more satisfactory than the disconnected 

 observations of the book-making traveller. 



The mo.st comprehensive observations on native ethnology have, 

 as might be expected, been made by enlightened mi.ssionaries and 

 sympathetic magistrates and officials, and by a few professional or 

 amateur ethnologists who have devoted longer or shorter periods to 

 South Africa. But little more than the surface soil has been turned 

 so far, and there are strata upon strata of material awaiting e\en dis- 

 covery. There must be a vast amount of information nr\ nativf customs 



