4o5 
TRAVELS IN 
feet of the former may be more owing to a want of tlie latter 
than to the nature of their food. Those, perhaps, who have 
been accustomed to observe the peasantry on the north-west 
coast of Ireland, a tall, strong, and brawny race of men, 
subsisting on butter-milk and potatoes, will think it unneces- 
sary to produce the Kalfcrs as instances of the above remark ; 
it may serve, however, to shew that difference of climate has 
no power to alter the general principle, and that the same 
cause produces the same effect in the northern parts of Europe 
and in the southern corner of Africa. 
Milk in a curdled state is the principal food of the Kaffers. 
To this they sometimes add a few gramineous roots, berries 
of various kinds, the seeds of the Strelitzia Kegm<E^ and the 
pith of a large palm to which botanists have given the name 
of Zamia. I observed also large tuberous roots, each the 
size of a man's head, of a spongy substance and an austere 
pungent taste, but I was not able to trace the plant of which 
they were (he roots. They rarely kill any of their cattle un- 
less on particular occasions. They possess no other domestic 
animals to yield them food. In the whole Kaffer country 
there are neither sheep nor goats, pigs nor poultry. They cul- 
tivate no kind of grain nor vegetables on this side of the 
Great Fish River, and very httle on the other side ; but the 
Kaffer tribes, more to the westward, are very considerable 
horticulturists. The commissioners, sent out by the British 
government in the year 1801, to endeavour to procure a sup- 
ply of draught oxen, found extensive fields of a species of 
Holcus near the city Leetakoo, the capital of a tribe of Kaf- 
fers called the BoaHhooanas^ situate at the distance of sixteen 
