(FtLATS ]Wo 
MALAY BOYS OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 
One of the boys, whose portrait is given on the accompanying plate, is a pretty fair example of the mixed race 
which forms a considerable proportion of the population of Cape Town and the surrounding districts. 
The boy depicted is a half-caste between the Malay and the Negro of Eastern Africa, from the Mozambique coast. 
He has his market-basket upon his shoulder. The costume is Malay. And in the background is a view of part of 
Hottentot Square, and the Keisergracht, in Cape Town. 
The Malay children are often very pretty, and remarkable for the largeness and brilliancy of their dark eyes. It is 
amusing on a feast-day or holiday to see the little Malay boys and girls, not more than three or four years of age, 
and often scarcely able to walk, dressed exactly like their fathers and mothers, and led forth by their fond and exulting 
parents, looking like old people in miniature. The figure of the little boy wearing the wide conical hat is an example 
of this kind, and conveys an exact idea of a young Malay of some four or five years old. The girls look more odd 
than the boys: figures which, when viewed from behind, appear like extremely diminutive women, turn out to be girls, oi 
mere infants, wearing the long plaited skirt, the quaint short waist, the full sleeves, and the hair anointed with cocoa-nut 
oil, and fastened behind with a huge gold bodkin, fashions which appertain alike to themselves and their grandmothers. 
All the Malays in Cape Town speak Dutch; but the better class understand and write the Arabic and Malay. 
