350 
MATERNAL AFFECTION.^ KAROSS AND KOBO. 11, 12 Jui-v, 
Although this woman's appearance did not indicate want of 
necessary food ; yet it certainly did not prove that she had been 
living in plenty. She was talkative, though sedate ; and the freedom 
and mature confidence with which the daughter often held a con- 
versation with the mother, were remarkable : yet there was, in the 
child's manner, nothing disrespectful. She seemed to treat them 
with all maternal affection ; and at night, as she lay down on the 
bare ground to sleep, she wrapped them up with her under her own 
kobo. 
I may here remark that Icaross and Iwho are but two words 
for the same thing ; the former belonging to the Hottentot, and the 
latter to the Sichuana, language. They signify the skin-cloak, already 
described ; and may be used indifferently ; although the latter is 
more proper to express the Bichuana cloak, which differs in fashion a 
little from the other, as it does also in materials ; the kaross being 
generally made of sheep skin with the wool on, and the kobo, either 
of the fur of various small animals, or of some larger skin made into 
leather. The latter sort, called koho-kaama, because most commonly 
made of the skin of the kaama antelope, is therefore more properly 
intended for summer ; but the fur-cloaks, called kosi-kobo, being very 
expensive to purchase, or very difficult to procure, on account of the 
number of animals required in making it, poverty obliges the greater 
part of the nation to wear their leathern cloaks at all seasons, though 
they are considerably colder than those of fur. * 
This poor creature possessed, she said, nothing on earth, but the 
clothes she wore : and, from the kindness which she testified towards 
her children, she certainly would not have allowed them to remain 
almost naked, if she could have obtained another cloak. She was how- 
ever, besides her cloak, the owner of a pitsa (peetsar) or earthen pot ; 
and which she had brought with her as a very significant emblem of 
* Of the kinds of kobo here mentioned, that made of fur is represented in plates 
7 and 8; that of leather, in plate 10, and in the 21st, 31st, and 36th vignettes. The 
sheep-skin kaross may be seen in the vignette at page 1 . 
