244 HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY. 



disposition engage in jokes and raillery, and laugh with a hearty good will. 

 Their intellect is generally of a very inferior order, they comprehend with 

 great difficulty, and reflection appears to fatigue them ; they give them- 

 selves up to sensual enjoyments and pleasure without the least restraint, 

 and their highest good fortune is inaction. The fetishes worshipped by 

 them are either certain living animals, intrusted to the care of youths and 

 maidens employed for the purpose ; or representations of human beings 

 and animals carved by themselves; sometimes also plants, chiefly trees. 

 The negroes pray to these idols, not from fear, but with a view of per- 

 suading them to show them greater favor ; and the sorcerers and jugglers 

 employ every means to keep these poor creatures in their superstition. 

 They believe in a sort of spiritual existence after death, and in a transmi- 

 gration of souls ; and the negroes acquainted with Europeans entertain the 

 desire that after death their soul may go into the body of a white man ; 

 indeed, they even beseech their gods, if there is no place ready for it, 

 to keep their soul in heaven until it can pass into a white man. Some 

 tribes are said to be cannibals. Negroes bear bodily pain with the greatest 

 calmness; and a sound indicative of sliffering is seldom heard from them 

 even when undergoing the most horrible torments. 



PL 28. fig. 6, baptized negresses of Benguela ; fig. 8, armed Molua 

 negroes guarding the king's house ; fig. 9, human sacrifice among the 

 Cassange negroes ; fig. 4, a negro chief under the Portuguese dominion 

 surrounded by his chieftains and wives ; fig. 5, solemnity in honor of the 

 dead among the negro tribes south of the river Coango; fig. 7, negro 

 soldier of the Portuguese possessions. 



In the regions on the coast of the Indian Ocean, from the confines of the 

 Cape Land to a point beneath the equator, there is a race differing greatly 

 from the negroes proper. Their skull is high-arched, the entire head of an 

 agreeable form, the nose not flat, and the teeth of dazzling whiteness ; the 

 lips nevertheless are large, and the cheekbones prominent. The men, in 

 particular, display a vigorous and slender form, and their limbs are strong 

 and symmetrical. Their complexion is brown, but towards the equator 

 passes into the deepest black ; the hair is black, short, and woolly. 



When the Portuguese came to the coasts of Sofala and Mozambique, 

 they found two kinds of inhabitants : Arabic colonists of mixed or pure 

 blood, and the dark-colored natives of the country. The former, being of 

 the Mohammedan faith, were denominated by the Portuguese, Moors; 

 the latter, however, were called by the Arabs, Kafirs, that is to say 

 " unbelievers." This name was retained by the Portuguese, corrupting it 

 by degrees into Kaffers, or CafFres, which is now applied to a tribe whose 

 territory is not confined to the eastern coast merely, but extends over the 

 entire elevated country of South Africa, as far as the Atlantic coast. 

 Cafi^reland, or Cafi^raria proper, reaches from the Keiskamma (the river 

 constituting the boundary line between Caffraria and the British Cape 

 Colony) to an undetermined boundary which falls a little to the south of 

 Delagoa Bay. The western border is said to be in the district of the 

 sources of the Orange river, emptying into the Atlantic ocean, and the 

 416 



