148 
TRAVELS IN 
proportion, and women well made, not ill-featured, fmart, and 
adive. Thefe people, called bajlaards^ generally marry with each 
other, or with perfons of color, but feldom with Hottentots, fo 
that it is probable this mixed breed in a fhort time will fup- 
plant that from which they are defcended in the female line. 
The Hottentot girls in the fervice of the colonifts are in fitua- 
tions too dependant to dare to rejedl the proffered embraces of 
the young peafantry. 
It has frequently been obferved that a favage who dances 
and fmgs muft be happy. With him thefe operations are the 
effed:s of pleafurable fenfations floating in his mind : in a civil- 
ized ftate, they are arts acquired by ftudy, and pradifed at 
appointed times, without having any reference to the paflions. 
If dancing and fmging were the tefts by which the happinefs 
of a Hottentot was to be tried, he would be found among the 
moft miferable of all human beings ; I mean thofe Hottentots 
living with the farmers of Graaff Reynet in a ftate of bondage. 
It is rare to obferve the mufcles of his face relaxed into a fmile. 
A deprelTed melancholy and deep gloom conftantly overfpreads 
his countenance. A Ghonaqua man and a young Hottentot 
girl from Sneuwberg, both of them in the fervice of one of 
the farmers who crolTed the defert with us, were the only two 
I had hitherto met with who .feemed to have any tafte for 
mufic. They had different inftruments ; one was a kind of 
guittar with three ftrlngs ftretched over a piece of hollow wood 
with a long handle j it was called in their language gabowie. 
The other inftrument was extremely fimple : It confifted of a 
piece of fmew or inteftine twifted into a fmall cord, and faftened 
to 
