Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 2).djvu/329

It has been asserted, with general truth, that cannibalism has not been a vice of South African Natives. It was not found among the Hottentots, nor even among the Bushmen except with rare instances, nor among the Kafirs or Zulus. There is no reason to believe that the Basutos brought the practice with them from among their ancestors the Bechuanas. But there is ample evidence that they practised it during the time of their wars with the Matabeles and Korannas, and reason to suppose that it has been carried on in a hidden, shame-faced way, in opposition to the endeavours of their Chiefs, down to within a very modern date. M. Cassalis tells us the stories of cannibalism which he had heard from Natives on his arrival in the country, and, giving 1820 as a date, says that Moshesh put an end to these horrors. He acknowledges in a note that he has been accused of inventing these details for the sake "of giving a dramatic interest to our recital,"—and goes on to declare that when he was in the country, "there were thirty or forty villages the entire population of which is composed of those who were formerly cannibals and who make no secret of their past life." Had I read all this without light from subsequent record, I should have felt that M. Cassalis was a writer far too simple and too honest to have invented anything for the sake of "dramatic interest:"—but that he was a man who might have been hoaxed even by thirty or forty villages. Having been taught to believe that Cannibalism had not prevailed in South Africa, I think I might have doubted the unaided testimony of the French missionary. But there is a testimony very much subsequent which I cannot doubt.