94 TRAVELS IN 
however, not likely to continue to a very remote posterity. 
The name of Hottentot will be forgotten or remembered only 
as that of a deceased person of little note. Their numbers of 
late years have been rapidly on the decline. It has generally 
been observed that wherever Europeans have colonized, the 
less civilized natives have always dwindled away, and at 
length totally disappeared. Various causes have contributed 
to the depopulation of the Hottentots. The impolitic custom 
of hording together in families, and of not marrying out of 
their own kraals, has no doubt tended to enervate this race 
of men, and to reduce them to their present degenerated con- 
dition, which is that of a languid, listless, phlegmatic people, 
in whom the prolific powers of nature seem to be nearly ex- 
hausted. To this may be added their extreme poverty, scan- 
tiness of food, and continual dejection of mind, arising from 
the cruel treatment they receive from an inhuman and un- 
feeling peasantry, who having discovered themselves to be re- 
moved to too great a distance from the seat of government to 
be awed by its authority, have hitherto exercised, in the most 
wanton and barbarous manner, an absolute power over these 
poor wretches, whom they had reduced to the necessity of de- 
pending upon them for a morsel of bread. There is scarcely 
an instance of cruelty, said to have been committed against 
the slaves in the West-India islands, that could not find a pa- 
rallel from the Dutch farmers of the remote districts of the 
colony towards the Hottentots in their service. Beating and 
cutting with thongs of the hide of the sea-cow or rhinosce- 
ros, are only gentle punishments, though these sort of whips, 
'which they call shnmbocs, are most horrid instruments, being 
tough, pliant, and heavy almost as lead. Firing small shot 
