147 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE 
HOTTENTOT RACE. 
By M. J. A. ROORDA SMIT* 
D IFFERENT travellers who Lave had the opportunity of 
comparing the Hottentots and the Chinese, have found a 
great analogy between the two races. The first who remarked it 
were the old colonists of the Cape, who even gave to some tribes 
the name of ‘ Chinese Hottentots/ In England, also, John 
Barrow drew attention to this singular fact.f 
When, at a later period, Chinese coolies arrived at the Cape, 
their resemblance to the Hottentots was found to be striking, 
and led to frequent errors. Wood speaks of a traveller who 
believed that he had a Hottentot servant, and who discovered, 
only after some time, that the man was a Chinese.^ 
During my stay in South Africa, I have been more than 
once witness of similar facts. At the Cape, for instance, I have 
seen a Chinese and a Hottentot both serving in the same hotel ; 
as they were dressed almost in the same style, we were con- 
stantly confounding them, taking the Asiatic for the African, 
and vice versa. At the Diamond fields I met with a case of the 
same kind. 
In order to give a general character of the Hottentots, I 
cannot do better than quote the following passage from Yon 
Siebold : ‘ The breadth and coarseness of the face, the promi- 
nence of the cheekbones, the development of the jaws, the flat- 
tened form of the bridge of the nose, and the enlarged nostrils, 
the size of the mouth, the thickness of the lips, the apparent 
obliquity of the eyes, the stiff, abundant hair of a brownish - 
black colour, or inclining towards red, the heaviness of the eye- 
brows, the scarcity of the beard ; and lastly, a wheat- coloured, 
yellowish- red complexion distinguish them,’ &c.§ 
* From the Archives Neerlandaises des Sciences exact es et naturelles, 
tome xv. livr. 5. t Barrow, Voyage to Cochin China. 
X Natural History of Man, p. 241. 
§ Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man, vol. i. p. 232 ; Catalogue du Musee Trolik, 
par Dusseau, p. 32. 
