in the early years of the nineteenth century, after five or six months' residence, could usually speak Dutch quite fluently. But this acquirement of a new language did not affect his way of thinking or his conduct in any high degree: he remained as he was before, a savage.
The Bushmen occupied the whole of South Africa, except the district bordering on the Indian ocean between the Zambesi and Sabi rivers, until a century or two before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Europeans,[1] when they were deprived of a considerable portion of it by the people known to us as Hottentots and Bantu, who came down from the north. Being better armed and disciplined than the aboriginal savages, the invaders had little difficulty in exterminating them or driving them into the barren parts.
The variations between the three classes of human beings occupying the country after that event were very marked. In order to bring them clearly before the reader they are given here in consecutive paragraphs, though this chapter deals particularly with the primitive inhabitants only.
Bushmen: frame dwarfish,[2] colour yellowish brown, face triangular or fox-like in outline, eyes small and deeply sunk, root of nose low, and the whole organ extremely broad, jaws very protuberant, but upper part of face almost vertical, head dotted over with little knots of twisted wiry hair not much larger than peppercorns, in general no beard whatever, ears without lobes, chest particularly well developed, stomach protuberant, back exceedingly hollow, buttocks—especially of adult females—of very large dimensions, limbs slender, hands
- ↑ The time cannot be given more closely than this. That it could not have been longer than a very few centuries will be shown in the chapters upon the Hottentots and the Bantu.
- ↑ Occasionally among the Masarwa in the Betshuana country individuals over one hundred and sixty-seven centimetres or five English feet and a half are found, but these are mixed breeds. They show Bantu blood in their darker colour as well as in their general form and size. On account of their habits they are termed Bushmen by Europeans, but their descent from mixed parentage is known to themselves and to their pure Betshuana neighbours.
