hovels, composed of twigs and earth, in which large families sit and sleep without having room to stand upright. The fire in the middle fills these mansions with thick smoke, the floors being deeply covered with every species of filth. At festivals, when an ox or a sheep is killed, the Hottentots rip open the belly, tear out the entrails, which they throw on the coals, and feast on them before the animal is completely dead. Yet they are a friendly, hospitable race, living together in the greatest affection and harmony. The sluggish and senseless stupidity with which they have been so generally taxed, seems to have been in a great measure produced by their degrading subjection to the Dutch boors.' It has been asserted that the Hottentots are destitute of all ideas of religion; but this is not correct. It is ascertained that they believe in a Supreme Being, as well as in an inferior spirit of malignant nature; and that they practice certain superstitious rites, such as are usual among savages.
Such is the description given of the Hottentots as they were under the Dutch rule. Since the Cape came into the possession of the British, they have not been treated with the same neglect and cruelty as they experienced from the Dutch, who used to prohibit Hottentots, equally with dogs, from entering their places of worship; still, with some exceptions, arising from the beneficial effects produced in some places by the missionaries, the account seems to remain substantially true. Immediately to the north of the colony, and on the borders of the Snewburg or Snowy Mountains, are the Bosjesmans, or Bushmans, the most savage and degraded of all the South Africans. They were visited in 1797 by Mr. Barrow, private secretary to Lord Macartney, with the view of ascertaining whether friendly relations might not be entered into with them, to prevent their incursions upon the farms of the Europeans.
Mr. Barrow, at the same period, crossed the frontier which divides the colony from the country of the Caffres, and made acquaintance with this race, differing widely in almost all respects from their neighbors the Bushmans. He found them a handsome and spirited people, of frank and generous deportment, leading a roaming pastoral life, and possessing numbers of cattle, in the rearing of which they seemed proficient.
Before the commencement of the present century, little more was known respecting the original inhabitants of Southern Africa than what we have thus generally indicated. But in 1801, two gentlemen, Messrs. Trutter and Somerville, made an excursion to a considerable distance beyond the districts of the Bushmans and the Caffres, whom Mr. Barrow had visited, and discovered a large river, now called Orange River, flowing westward into the Atlantic. The banks of this river they found inhabited by a pastoral tribe called the Koranes; and the information they received from this people inducing them to continue their journey still farther to the north, they at last reached what not a little surprised them—a city or town of two or three thousand houses, very neatly built, and well-arranged. The name of this city was Lattakoo; and the accounts which the travelers brought back of it to the Cape, and of the friendliness with which they had been received by the Boshuanas, who were then the prevalent tribe, induced the government to send Dr. Cowan and Lieutenant Denovan to continue the discovery, and, if possible, make their way past Lattakoo, so as ultimately to reach Mozambique on the east coast. The issue of this expedition was unfortunate. The travelers reached Lattakoo in safety,
