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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
these Chinese refer their arrival in Bourbon to the fifteenth or 
sixteenth century. A French half-caste, whom I met in the 
Diamond fields of South Africa, gave the date of their establish- 
ment still earlier. 
The mythology of the Hottentots leaves us equally in 
obscurity. Old travellers, Koibe amongst others, have de- 
scribed with much emphasis the religious ceremonies of the 
Hottentots. None of these accounts deserves the smallest con- 
fidence, any more than those of certain missionaries who believed 
they had made the same observations. 
Le Vaillant, who of all the travellers to the Cape is most 
worthy of belief, and whose accounts are most exact and most 
provable, was unable to observe any trace of religion, either in 
the Korannas or in the Namaquas. 
The later researches of M. Bleek on the mythology of the 
Bosjesmans do not further enlighten us on the subject. 
The legends and the myths collected by him all relate to 
the animals of Africa and to the stars of the southern sky. 
Most, if not all of them, are of very recent date. This is evi- 
dent, among others, in the myth of the origin of the Moon, 
which M. Bleek regards — it is difficult to understand why — as 
among the most ancient. 4 The Mantis threw one of her shoes 
at the Moon, which made it red (the Moon) because the red 
sand of the Bosjesmans 7 country adhered to the shoe, and cold 
because the shoe was only made of leather. Thus the Moon is red 
because she teas covered with the red dust of Bushmanland, and 
cold because it is only leather / ( Cape Monthly Magazine , xi., 
109.) 
Now I must point out that the ancient Hottentots, although 
knowing since the sixteenth century how to tan skins, 
never wore shoes. Further, all the Bosjesmans whom I have 
seen were barefooted. The only chaussure which is found 
among them of ancient date (and not even generally) consisted 
of straps rolled round the lower part of the leg. As for shoes, 
the Bosjesmans knew nothing of them until they came in con- 
tact with the Europeans. The legend in question, then, must 
have been formed afterwards. 
The first attempts at painting among the Bosjesmans are 
probably of an equally recent date. The reproductions which 
Wood gives of them in his Natural History of Man, suggest 
immediately the idea of • badly- executed sketches of naval 
officers, recognizable among other things by the peculiar form 
of their hats. Some hunters assured me they had seen, in 
caves, early representations of animals. 
All the Hottentots have a vivid imagination. They speak 
and sing willingly, but their recitals generally wander far from 
the truth. It is this which makes me look upon the information 
