374 TRAVELS IN 
had the management of it ; and as the Hottentots were 
neither paid, clothed, nor fed, they exhibited a scene of filth, 
misery, and wretchedness ; they became a nuisance to the 
town, and were in consequence disbanded. 
The colonists were ready to predict a similar fate to the 
attempt of Sir James Craig, of forming them into a corps ; 
but their predictions ended in their disappointment. *' Never," 
observes Sir James, " were people more contented or more 
grateful for the treatment they now receive. We have up- 
" wards of three hundred who have been with us nine months. 
" It is, therefore, with the opportunity of knowing them well, 
*^ that I venture to pronounce them an intelligent race of 
" men. All who bear arms exercise well, and understand 
" immediately, and perfectly, whatever they are taught to 
" perform. Many of them speak English tolerably well. 
" We were told that so great was their propensity to drunken- 
*' ness, we should never be able to reduce them to order or 
" discipline, and that the habit of roving was so rooted in 
" their disposition, we must expect the whole corps would 
" desert, the moment they had received their clothing. With 
" respect to the first, I do not find they are more given to 
" the vice of drinking than our own people ; and, as to their 
" pretended propensity to roving, that charge is fully con- 
" futed by the circumstance of only one man having left us 
" since I first adopted the measure of assembling them, and 
" he was urged to this step from having accidentally lost his 
firelock/' — " Of all the qualities," he further observes, 
" that can be ascribed to a Hottentot, it will little be ex- 
pected I should expatiate upon their cleanliness; and yet 
