unknown God,' that little satisfactory information can be collected on those points without a very familiar and extensive knowledge of the language of the people among whom the inquiry is made, which was far from being the case in the present instance. The king being asked if they had any belief in a supernatural power, and, if so, what were their notions concerning it? replied, that they believed in the existence of some invisible power that sometimes brought good and sometimes evil upon them; it was this power that caused men to die suddenly, or before they arrived at years of maturity; that raised the wind, and made thunder and lightning to frighten, and sometimes, kill them; that led the sun across the world in the day, and the moon by night; and that made all those things which they could not understand nor imitate. I then showed him my watch; and from his great surprise it was clear he had never seen one before. On examining attentively the movements, and observing that the motion was continued in his own hands, he looked at the surrounding spectators, and pronounced the word fregas, which was echoed back with a nod of the head from the whole crowd. Concerning this word the Hottentot interpreter could get no other information than that it was some influence of the dead over the living in instigating and directing the actions of the Jatter. He called it a ghost or spirit, and said it was the Kaffer way of swearing. It appeared that if a Kaffer swore by a deceased relation, his oath was considered as inviolable. A promise was always held sacred when a piece of metal was broken between the parties; a practice not unlike the breaking

of a sixpence between two parting lovers, still kept up in some country places of England. That these people have not bewildered their imaginations so far with metaphysical ideas of the immortality of the soul, as the more civilised part of mankind have given into, and that their notions have been little directed towards a future state of existence, was clear from his replies to various questions put to him on that subject. As little information was likely to be gained on such abstruse points through the medium of a Hottentot interpreter, the conversation was turned to other subjects less embarrassing, and such as came more immedi ately before the senses.

Their skill in music is not above the level of that of the Hottentots. They have in fact no other instruments except the two in use among the latter, and a small whistle made of the bone of some animal, and used sometimes for giving orders to their cattle when at a distance. They seldom attempt to sing or to dance, and their performances of both are miserably bad. A Kaffer woman is only serious when she dances, and at such times her eyes are constantly fixed on the ground, and her whole body seems to be thrown into convulsive motions.

"A greater degree of amuse. ment seems to be derived by the women from the practice of tatooing, or marking the body by raising the epidermis from the cuticle; a custom that has been found to exist among most of the uncivilised nations inhabiting warm countries, and which probably owes its origin to a total want of mental resources, and of the employment of time. By slightly irritating, it conveys to the body

plea

pleasurable sensations. In Kafferland it has passed into a general fashion. No woman is without a tattooed skin; and their ingenuity is chiefly exercised between the breasts and on the arms.

"The temperate manner of living among these people, their simple diet and their duly proportioned quantity of exercise, subject them to few complaints. A limited number of simples compose the dispensary of all nations where physic is not a profession. The Kaffers make use of very few plants, and these chiefly in embrocations for sprains and bruises. The mother of Gaika was so solicitous to procure from us a quantity of common salt, to be applied as a purgative, that she sent a person to our waggons, fifteen miles distant, for it. They are not subject to any cutaneous diseases. The small-pox was once brought among them by a vessel that was stranded on their coast, and carried off great numbers. The marks of this disorder were apparent on the faces of many of the elder people. They have no fermented nor distilled liquors to impair the constitution. The only two intoxicating articles of whica they have any knowledge are tobacco and hemp. The effects produced from smoking the latter are said to be fully as narcotic as those of opium. In the use of this and of tobacco, the oriental custom of drawing the smoke through water by means of the hook ar, though in a rude manner, is still retained. The bowl of their earthen-ware pipe is attached to the end of a thick reed which stands obliquely fixed into the side of an eland's horn. This horn being filled with water, the mouth is applied to the opposite end to that near which the reed is fixed. The Hottentot dif

fers very materially from the Kafler in the construction of his pipe. He reduces the stem to the length of two inches, that two senses may at the same time receive the benefit and the gratification resulting from the practice of smoking.

"Few are the dietetic plants cultivated by the Kaffers. The millet, called by botanists the holcus sorghum, and a very large species of water-melon, seem to be their principal culinary plants. The zamia cycadis, a species of palm, grows wild in almost every part of the country, and is sometimes used, as a substitute for millet, to mix with milk as a kind of frumenty. For this purpose the pith of the thick stem is buried in the ground for a month or five weeks, till it becomes soft and short, so as easily to be reduced to a pulpy consistence. They eat also the roots of the iris edulis, and several kinds of wild berries, and leguminous plants.

"Had the Kaffers been more generally employed in tilling the ground, they had probably before this arrived at a more competent knowledge of the general causes by which the vicissitudes of the seasons are produced. At present they know little more of astronomy than that in about thirty days the moon will have gone through all its different phases; and that in about twelve moons the same seasons will return. Their only chronology is kept by the moon, and is registered by notches in pieces of wood. It seldom extends beyond one generation till the old series is cancelled, and some great event, as the death of a favourite chief, or the gaining of a victory, serves for a new era.

"Not the smallest vestige of a written character is to be traced among them; but their language appears

vage

appears to be the remains of some thing far beyond that of any sanation. In the enunciation it is soft, fluent, and harmonious; has neither the monotonous mouthing of the savage, nor the nasal nor guttural sounds that prevail in almost all the European tongues. It is as different from that of the Hottentots as the latter is from the English. In a very few words, and these are generally proper names, they have adopted the palatial clacking of the tongue used by the Hottentots. The mountains and rivers in the country, for instance, still retain their Hottentot names; a presumptive proof that the Kaffers were intruders upon this nation. It is singular enough that the Kaffers, as well as the Hottentots, should have obtained a name that never belonged to them. The word Kaffer could not be pronounced by one of that nation. They have no sound of the letter r in their language. A Koffray,

among the Indians, is an infidel, a pagan, and was a general name applied by the early voyagers to those people, in whom they did not perceive any traits of a religious nature; but the origin of the name of Hottentot seems not yet to have been ascertained. The Kaffers call themselves Koussie, which word is pronounced by the Hottentots with a strong palatial stroke of the tongue on the first syllable. I know not if the Kaffer language bears any analogy to the Arabic; but their word eliang for the sun has an oriental sound for expressing the same idea. The following brief specimen of the Kaffer language, with the synonymous words in that of the Hottentots, may serve to show how little resemblance they bear to each other. The hyphen, in the latter, expresses the dental, and the circumflex the palatial, action of the tongue on those syllables over which they are placed.

HOTTENTот.

Surrie.

Inyango,

kā.

Kōro.

Umclabo,

Koo.

Amaphoo,

Kōm,

Leaw,

Ei.

Kām.

hōōnoo.

hōōnoo-ei.

qua.

Rain,

Imphoola,

Tōōkai.

hurroo.

A man,
A woman,

Abaantoo,

Quaina.

An ox,

Toona.

Hasai.

To-morrow,

Gamtzo,

Quatrie.

Kăm.

"The Kaffers differ also very materially from all the neighbouring nations in their manner of disposing of the dead. Funeral rites are bestowed only on the bodies of their chiefs, and on their children. The first are generally interred very deep in the kraals or places where their own oxen used to stand at nights; and the bodies of infants are most commonly deposited in the ant-hills that have been excavated by the myrmecophage or ant-eaters. The rest are exposed to be devoured by wolves. As these animals drag them away immediately into their dens, the relations of the deceased are in no danger of being shocked or disgusted with the sight of the mangled carcase. A Kaffer, in consideration of this piece of service, holds the life of a wolf sacred, at least, he never

en

deavours to destroy it; the consequence of which is, that the country swarms with them. Some author has asserted, that the custom of burning the dead was universal, till the practice of it, adopted as the most prudent and convenient disposal of an unpleasant object, became a subject of ostentatious parade; and the funeral pile having at length exhausted the forests, necessity obliged them to have recourse to other means, some to interment, others to exposure in high places to be devoured by crows and vultures. Had the Kaffers ever burned their dead in the country they now inhabit, they were under no necessity of discontinuing the practice for want of fuel, being in the midst of inexhaustible forests."

Some

"THE

HE natives who occupy the environs of Tchinkitânay Bay are of a stature below the middle size; none of five feet four inches (French) are to be seen: their body is thick, but tolerably well proportioned; their round and flat face is not set off by their snub but sharp nose, little watery eyes, sunk in the head, and prominent cheek-bones. It is no easy matter to determine the colour of their complexion; it might be imagined to be red or light brown, but a coat of natural dirt, thickened by a foreign mixture of red and black substances, with which they smear their visage, suffers no remnant of their primitive skin to be discovered. The coloured strokes which they trace on their face, present not all the same design; but all equally add to their natural ugliness. Their coarse, thick hair, covered with ochre, down of birds, and all the filth which neglect and time have accumulated in it, contributes to render their aspect still more hideous. They wear their beard only at a certain age; the youths carefully eradicate it: adults suffer it to grow and it is at this day well proved, by the unanimous account of the different voyagers who have visited the north-west coast of America, that all the Americans have a beard, in contradiction to the opinion of some of the learned, who have refused it to the men of the New World, and wished to make of this want of hair a variety in the human species. It is pro

bable that the face of those at Tchink itânay Bay would be less disgusting, if they preserved that which nature has given them; for the young boys have an agreeable, and even an interesting countenance; but age, and still more the trouble which they take to make themselves ugly by wishing to embellish themselves, end in giving them hard, coarse, and even ferocious features. Surgeon Roblet attributes their air of ferocity to the frequent expression of the passions by which they are agitated. Tattooing is little in use among the Tchinkitânayans; a few men only are tattooed on the hands, and on the legs below the knee; almost all the women are tattooed on the same parts of the body.

"The women, more fair, or less dark than the men, are still more ugly a big and clumsy head; a circular face; a nose squeezed in about the middle of its length; eyes small and inanimate; cheekbones very prominent; hair, or rather a mare, thick, bushy, and coarse, tied behind with strips of leather, either in the form of a cue or a club; the shoulders strong and broad; the neck low, tolerably firm and well rounded in those who are not sixteen, but extremely flabby and pendent in those who have suckled; a waist short and thick; knees and feet turned in, subject to strike against each other in walking; and, to complete the whole, a filthiness truly disgusting. Most assuredly, if we place this

portrait