HOTTENTOT DEGRADATION. 
159 
but similar to the tribes themselves, by whom 
it is used ; viz, not as it was, the original lan- 
guage of the nation, but the degraded remnant 
of what both once were. The people, it appears, 
have arrived at their present condition, by a 
gradual process of innovation which had been 
going on for centuries past, during the long 
period which the several Hottentot migrations 
are conjectured to have occupied. In the course 
of this, they appear to have descended from 
one stage of intellectual degradation to another, 
until they finally arrived at that extreme point 
of barbarity, in which they were first found 
by Europeans. Their language, partaking of 
the same degeneracy, may reasonably be as- 
sumed to have lost much of its original sym- 
metry and harmony, and to be now recognized 
merely by the skeleton of its form, expressed 
in the most disagreeable and unmusical manner. 
Such, throughout their tribes, is the senior 
branch of the aboriginal South African family 
of Ham — u the Hottentots. 9 ' Despising them- 
selves, and still more despised by others ; de- 
graded and debased even by the approach of 
civilization; drunkards, and idlers; they wan- 
der over the land as outcasts upon it : and, until 
Christianity assumes among them a form of 
organization and regularity, and a discipline 
more tangible than at present, we fear but few 
