402 A JOURNEY IN 
Booshuanas, of a light yellow complexion, with long coarse 
hair, which they frizzled on the top of the head in the shape 
of a turban. It appeared that this horde, to the amount of 
about four hundred persons, Avas the ofFs})ring of three 
European women, who had been wrecked when infants on 
thh part of the coast, whom the boors saw and conversed 
with, through an interpreter, but who could neither inform 
them of what nation they were, nor how or when the accident, 
happened. In the opinion of the travoUers they were French. 
Had these three old women died before this journey was 
undertaken, the origin of the Hamboonas woidd have been 
as unsatisfactorily conjectured as that of the Hottentots, and 
their descent from the French deemed fully as improbable as 
that of the latter from the Chinese. 
From whence the Booshuanas originally sprang, or for 
what length of time they had occupied their present situation 
in Southern Africa, they themselves were wholly incapable 
of communicating the least information to the inquiries of the 
commissioners. They were not even able to give any satis- 
factory account of the ruins of a town as large as that of 
Leetal'oo, which at no very remote distance of time had stood 
on the heights commanding the valley. The foundations of 
the houses were of stone, and of the same circular plan as- 
those of the Booslmanas. Having no written language, the 
tradition of these ruins once being lost, their real history can 
never be revived. v 
The commissioners having remained fifteen days among this 
peaceable and happy people, and finding that, although the 
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