lOG 
THE MOOES. 
formed, where the cattle are kept at nights. The milk, as soon as 
taken from the cow, is put to other milk which is curdled, and kept 
in a leather sack, with the hairy side inwards, as being the more 
cleanly, so that thus the milk is never drunk sweet. In some northern 
districts, where the land is dry and parched, both Hottentots and 
colonist, are shepherds. When a Hottentot intends to shift his 
dwelling, he lays all the rods, skins, and mats, of which it is com- 
posed, on the backs of his cattle, which to a stranger makes a mon- 
strous unwieldy and even ridiculous appearance. 
Superstitions. 
The Hottentots have very crude notions of religion. They have 
the most firm belief in the powers of magic ; from wdience it might be 
inferred that they believe in an evil being analogous to the devil ; but 
they pay no religious worship to him, though from this source they de- 
rive all the evil that happens ; and among these they reckon cold, 
rain, and thunder. So great is their ignorance, that many of the 
colonists assured Dr. Sparrman that their Boshiesmen would abuse 
the thunder with many opprobrious epithets, and threaten to assault 
the flashes of lightning with old shoes, or any thing that first came 
to hand. Even the most intelligent among them could not be con- 
vinced, by all the arguments our author could use, that rain w'as not 
always an evil, and that it would be an unhappy circumstance were it 
never to rain. “A maxim,” says he, “from a race of men in other 
respects really endowed with good sense, and frequently with no small 
degree of penetration and cunning, which ought niethinks to be consi- 
dered as an indelible religious or superstitious notion, entertained by 
them from their infancy.” 
As the Hottentots have so strong a belief in the power of magic, 
it is no wonder that they have abundance of witches and conjurers 
among them. Many of the Hottentots believe that all disorders inci- 
dent to the human body are cured by magic. The wizards encourage 
this idea, but at the same time take care to employ both external and 
internal remedies. These conjurers seem to be possessed of a con- 
siderable slight of hand. The superstition of the Hottentots never 
operates in making them afraid in the dark. They seem, however, to 
have some idea of a future state, as they reproach their friends, 
when dead, with leaving them so soon, at the same admonishing them 
from henceforth to demean themselves properly, by which they mean 
that their deceased friends should not come back again and haunt 
them, nor allow themselves to be made use of by wizards to bring 
any mischief on those that survive them. 
There is a genus of insects which, it has been generally thought, 
the Hottentots worship ; but our author says, that so far from this, 
they have more than once caught several for him, and assisted him 
in sticking pins through them. “ There is, however,” he adds, “ a 
diminutive specie^i of this insect, which some think it would be a 
crime, as well as very dangerous, to do any harm too *, but this we 
have no more reason to look upon as any kind of religious worship, 
than we have to consider in the same light a certain superstitious notion 
prevalent among many of the more simple people in our own country. 
