SOUTHERN AFRICA. 157 
While the men are employed in rearing and attending tiie 
cattle, the women are engaged in the affairs of the house, and 
in cultivating the ground. These, with the manufactuie of 
baskets with the Cyperus grass, and of earthern pots for 
boiling their meat or corn, which arc the chief part of their 
household utensils, the making their skin-cloaks, and nursing 
their children, furnish sufficient employment for the women. 
They are said to be exceedingly prohfic ; that twins are 
almost as frequent as single births, and that it is no uncom- 
mon thing for a woman to have three at a time. Their 
children, soon after birth, are suffered to crawl about per- 
fectly naked ; and at six or seven months they are able to 
run. A cripple or deformed person is never seen. The 
Dutch have an idea that if a Kaffer child should be born 
imperfect, the parents immediately strangle it; and, that 
if the mother should die in childbed, or before the infant 
can walk without support, it must be interred alive with her; 
also, that if twins are born one of them must peri&h.. Gaikas 
mother seemed shocked at questions of this nature being put 
to her ; and assured me that a woman who could suffer such 
an unnatural crime to be committed, as that of the murder of 
an infant, would be driven out of society. A high degree of 
civilization may indeed dull the feelings of nature, and policy 
may sometimes silently approve of crimes committed against 
it ; but a savage is most likely to feel the force of parental 
affection in its fullest extent. 
There is not perhaps any nation on the face of the earth, 
taken collectively, that can produce so fine a race of men as 
the Kaffers : they are tall, stout, muscular, well made, elegant. 
