SOUTHERN AFRICA. 115 
appears to be of such a nature as to make it impossible for 
an European ever to acquire ; the difficulty, however, which 
is chie% occasioned by the action of the tongue, is soon 
surmounted. Most of the Dutch peasantry in the distant 
districts speak it ; and many of them are so very much ac- 
customed to the use of it, that they introduce into their own 
language a motion of the organ of speech sufficiently distinct 
to shew from whence it was procured. 
Notwithstanding the inhuman treatment that the Hottentots 
experience from the Dutch farmers, the latter could ill dis- 
pense with the assistance of the former ; and, were they sen- 
sible of their own interest, and the interest of their posterity, 
instead of oppressing, they would hold out to them every 
encouragement. To guard their numerous herds ; to drive 
them from place to place in search of food and water, some- 
times on plains which produce not a shrub to screen them 
from the scorching rays of an almost vertical sun at one part 
of the year, or to aftbrd them a shelter from the cold winds, 
frost, and snow that happen in the other, would ill agree 
with the temper or with the constitution of the colonists ; yet 
should the present system of oppression continue, the time 
cannot be far distant when their own children must take upon 
them the charge now committed to Hottentots. The price of 
slaves is too high. In the whole district of Graaff Reynet 
there are not more than six or seven hundred blacks, or about 
one to each family ; but it contains about 10,000 Hottentots 
great and small. The total number of this people in the 
whole colony may be about fifteen thousand. Broken up 
and dispersed as the tribes of this nation now are, few of their 
