SOUTHERN AFRICA. 93 
injury, and so vindictive, that the slightest provocation will 
sometimes drive them into fits of plirenzy, during the con- 
tinuance ot" which it would be unsafe to come within their 
reach. The revengeful spirit of a Malay was strongly marked 
by an occurrence which happened some little time after the 
capture of the settlement. Conceiving that he had not only 
served his master with great fideUty, but a sufficient length 
of time, exclusive of the several suras of money he had given 
him, to entitle him to his freedom, he was one day tempted 
to remonstrate on the subject, and to demand his liberty, 
which, however, the master with more harshness than was 
necessary thought fit to refuse. The following morning the 
Malay murdered his fellow-slave. On being taken and 
brought up for examination before a commission of the Court 
of Justice, he not only confessed the fact, but acknowledged 
that the boy he had murdered was his friend. Being ques- 
tioned as to the motives which had led to the perpetration of 
so horrid an act, he calmly observed, that having considered 
the most effectual revenge he could practise on his master 
was not by taking away his life, but by robbing him of the 
value of a thousand rixdollars, in the loss of the boy, and 
another thousand by brinii;ing himself, in so doing, to the 
gallows, he could not but exult in what he had done, as the 
recollection of the loss would prey upon his master's avaricious 
mind for the remainder of his life. 
It is a circumstance not easily to be accounted for, that 
the Dutch should have given the preference to this race of 
men, of talents much inferior to those of the Hottentots, and 
