1812. 
ROGUERY. — RE-NAMING STRANGERS. 
89 
specimen of culinary talents, I broiled my own steak, in order to 
show him how, I conceived, it might be managed so as to be rendered 
a little more eatable. 
Ruiter, of whom I had been much inclined to think well, betrayed 
at length some slight symptoms of roguishness, in a trifling affair 
which was to him, too tempting an opportunity for cheating. I had 
commissioned him to purchase a pair of dancing-rattles, and had 
given him tobacco more than sufficient for that purpose : but he 
soon returned to tell me that this quantity was not thought enough. 
I therefore doubled it, and in a short time he brought me the rattles. 
On the following day I observed him wearing a beautiful leopard- 
skin kaross, and, on inquiry of the other Hottentots, discovered that 
he had obtained the rattles for a very small portion of the tobacco I 
had given, and that with the remainder he had purchased the skin. 
The captain of this kraal, having heard of our killing the two 
rhinoceroses for Kaabi, requested me to stop a day longer, and hunt 
for him also. But fearing to establish a custom which would hereafter 
prove extremely inconvenient to us, as it might lead every kraal to 
expect that we should do the same for them, I thought it most 
prudent at once to refuse Old Crowhead ; though at the same time I 
promised him a share of whatever we might chance to kill on the 
road, if he would allow some of his people to accompany us for the 
purpose of carrying it back. On which he ordered an old man and 
his son to attend us. 
Both these people being excessively thin, and apparently reduced 
to that state by want of food, they immediately received from my 
Hottentots the names of Oud, and Klein, Mageimian (Old, and 
Young, Lean-man). It seemed to be an act of charity to take these poor 
creatures with us, that we might feed them plentifully for a few days. 
The Hottentots, and, perhaps, all the tribes of Southern Africa, 
have a custom of thus giving names to strangers when they are of a 
different nation from themselves. This arises chiefly from the diffi- 
culty which they find, either in pronouncing, or in remembering, a 
name to which their ear has never been accustomed, or the meaning of 
which they do not understand. This is often done through inatten- 
VOL. II. N 
