CHAP, m.] HOTTENTOTS AND BUSHMEN. 69 



written on the subject. The Namaqua Hottentot is 

 simply the reclaimed and somewhat civilised Bushman, 

 just as the Oerlams represent the same raw material 

 under a slightly higher degree of polish. Not only 

 are they identical in featvires and language, but the 

 Hottentot tribes have been, and continue to be, 

 recruited from the Bushmen. The largest tribe of 

 these Namaqua Hottentots, those under Cornelius, and 

 who muster now 1000 guns, have almost aU of them 

 lived the life of Bushmen. In fact, a savage loses his 

 name, " Saen," which is the Hottentot word, as soon as 

 he leaves his Bushman's life and joins one of the larger 

 tribes, as those at Walfisch Bay have done ; and there- 

 fore when I say Oerlam Hottentot or Bushman, the 

 identically same yellow, flat-nosed, woolly-haired, 

 clicking individual must be conjured up before the 

 mind of my kind reader, but differing in dirt, squalor, 

 and nakedness, according to the actual term employed ; 

 the very highest point of the scale being a creature 

 who has means of dressing himself respectably on 

 Sundays and gala-days, and who knows something 

 of reading and writing; the lowest point, a regular 

 savage. 



Of the very smallest tribe of Bushmen I met none 

 in my travels. 



The Oerlams, then, some thirty years since, were 

 near the Orange River, and Jonker was a chief of 

 secondary importance amongst them. He fought his 

 way into notoriety, and with success his Kttle tribe 

 received fresh recruits. The Namaqua Hottentots 

 asked his assistance in attacking their northern 



