180 



chace, and the milk of their cattle, with a few roots peculiar to 

 the country, and sometimes a sheep from the flocks; but I believe 

 they nowhere cultivate corn, nor have any idea of gardening. 

 Cheerful, harmless, and hospitable, they are perhaps happier in 

 ignorance, than some other nations with their boasted refinements. 

 They are fond of music, singing, and dancing; but nothing can 

 be more simple than their musical instruments, more monotonous 

 than their songs, nor more ungraceful than their dances. 



The boshmen, or wood-men Hottentots, are a set of people who 

 live by plundering their neighbours, whether Hottentots, Caffrees, 

 or Dutch farmers, at places the most remote from protection; they 

 shoot with poisoned arrows, and their appearance always spreads 

 alarm among the planters. I believe they are not of an} 7 par- 

 ticular tribe of Hottentots, but form a community of banditti, 

 composed of the vilest wretches from the other hordes; as also 

 from negro and mulatto slaves, who desert from the Cape, and 

 unite with these people in devoting themselves to a life of plunder, 

 devastation, and cruelly, throughout the Dutch colony, and the 

 peaceful tribes of Hottentots. 



Of Caffraria, which joins the Hottentots' country on the north, 

 and other distant parts of this vast continent, the inhabitants of 

 the Cape, when I was there, seemed to have but very little know- 

 ledge, except from the prejudiced relations and improbable stories 

 propagated by the ignorant planters who were settled nearest to 

 their districts. 



In the menagerie at the Cape I had an opportunity of making 

 drawings of most of the wild animals and curious birds from the in- 

 terior parts of Africa. Lions, tigers, elephants, hyenas, jackals, and 



