282 
TRAVELS IN 
\Vhen we refled on the Hottentot nation, which, with all 
its tribes, occupies, as it were, a point only on a great conti- 
nent ; when we confider them as a people differing in fo extra- 
ordinary a manner from every other race of men upon it, or 
upon the face of the whole globe even, the natural formation of 
their perfons, their color, language, manners, and way of life, 
being peculiar to themfelves, conje<flure is at a lofs to fuggeft 
from whence they could have derived their origin. Except 
in the extreme flatnefs of the nofe, and the fhort brufhy hair, 
they approach neareft in color, and in the confl:ru£lion of the 
features, to the Chinefe, how fingular foever it may feem to 
trace a likenefs between the moft civilized and ingenious, and 
one of the loweft of the human fpecies. If it be admitted, 
with feveral vv^ell-informed mifhonaries, that the Egyptians and 
the Chinefe were originally the fame people, and the argu- 
ments are certainly ftrong in favor of the fuppofition, notwith- 
ftanding the many learned and ingenious objedions ftated by 
the philofopher of Berlin, there would be no difficulty in con- 
ceiving fome of the numerous tribes of people who inhabited 
the vicinity of the Nile to have found their way to the utmoft 
limit of the fame continent. Indeed, from all the ancient ac- 
counts that have been preferved of the Egyptians and Ethio- 
pians, it would appear that the real Hottentots, or Bosjefmans, 
were the people intended to be defcribed. In their general 
phyfical charader they bear a ftrong refemblance to the Pigmies 
and Troglodytes, two tribes who are faid to have dwelt in the 
neighbourhood of the Nile. The charader drawn by Diodo- 
rus Siculus, of fome of the Ethiopian nations, agrees exadly 
with that of the Bosjefmans. A fpecies of brutality is ftated 
by 
