24 SOUTH AFRICA. 



was, if not an unknown, at least a very scarce 

 article of consumption. 



Since those days Adam Kok's territory has been 

 sold to the Orange Free State, and he and his 

 people removed to the coast between Natal and 

 the Kaffir tribes on the eastern frontiers of Cape 

 Colony. This yellow race displays essentially 

 imitative tendencies when brought into contact 

 with white people, and as a consequence has 

 decreased in numbers by at least 90 per cent, 

 within the last fifty years ; indeed, within Colonial 

 limits a pure-bred Hottentot is now very rarely 

 seen. As servants in many capacities they were 

 far superior to Kaffirs, excelling more especially 

 as grooms, trackers of lost cattle, shikar work, and 

 so forth. 



They might easily have been saved from extinc- 

 tion by appropriate legislation, but the anti-slavery 

 enthusiasts insisted on drastic treatment, and the 

 poor " Tottie " succumbed to a full dose of freedom, 

 administered without timely preparation. Whether 

 the darker-coloured aboriginal African races will 

 ever adopt our form of civilisation or not is 

 problematical. Shoddy specimens of converted 

 Kaffirs in considerable numbers are on show at 



