SOUTHERN AFRICA. 213 
time of performing the operation is generally at the age of 
eight or nine years. The people who follow the profeffion 
travel from village to village, cutting all the male children who 
may be of a proper age. During the time he remains in a village, 
which may be eight or ten days, to fee that his patients are 
doing well, he is feafted from houfe to houfe. 
To perform the operation of circumcifion nothing more is 
necelTary than a fharp piece of iron in the form of the blade of 
a knife. The point of this is inferted between the glans and 
the prepuce on the upper part, and the fkin laid open to the 
root where they unite ; from thence the inftrument is paffed 
down each fide to the froenum, clofe along the edge of which 
the whole prepuce is removed in two parts. After the opera- 
tion the boy adopts a fmall bag of leather which extends a little 
beyond the glans penis, and fits fufficiently tight to remain on 
without binding, though fome wear a belt to which the cover- 
ing is attached by a firing. The projecting end of the purfe 
has a fmall fhank about an inch in length by which it may 
more conveniently be drawn off : this, with the rings, and 
beads, and other ornaments, conflitutes the whole of a Kaffer's 
fummeff drefs. He wears nothing on his head, which is na- 
turally covered with the fame kind of curling hair as that of 
the Hottentot. This circumftance of fhort hair fhould feem to 
operate againft the fuppofition of their Arabic origin ; but their 
intermixture with the Hottentots and other neighbouring 
nations along the coaft, would very fpeedily have produced 
it ; and when a twift is once got into the hair, in a warm cli- 
mate, it feems to increafe with every generation. The Bajlaards 
here 
