Show I SOUTH AFRICAN NATIVES I THE THREE NATIVE RACES THAT UfHlVBIT THE COUNTRY The Bushmen the Hottentots and the Dantus oir Kiiflirs Tlicse Last Are Much Above the Level of the Others When the Dutch fixed their first post at Cape Town in 1652 with no thought either of colonization or of conquest but for the sake of having gardens which could supply fresh vegetables to the curvystricken crews of their ships sailing I sail-ing to the east they found three native races inhabiting the country One of these the Bushmen though few in number num-ber were widely scattered over the whole of South Africa They were nomads of almost the lowest kind with a marvellous faculty for tracking and trapping wild animals put neither owning cattle nor tilling the soil with scarcely even a tribal organization no religion and a language lan-guage consisting of a succession of clicks unaole to accustom themselves to civil zea me driven out of some districts by the settlers and in others no longer able to find support owing to the extinction of game tney are now almost extinct though a few are still left in the deserts of the Kalahari and northern Bechuana land Before many years the only trace of their existence will be in the remarkable remark-able drawings of animals with which they delighted to cover the smooth surfaces of rocks These drawings which are found all the way from Zambesi to toe Cape and from Manlacland to the Atlantic At-lantic are executed in red and yellow pigments and are often full of spirit and character TJie second race was that which the Dutch called Hottentot They were of a reddish or yellowish black hue taller than the Bushmen but with squat and seldom muscular figures a thoughtless cheerless easygoing people who roved hither and thither with their flocks and herds as they could find pasture They were decidedly superior to the Bushmen whom they hated but quite unable to Withstand Europeans and their numbers rapidly declined partly from the loss of their best grazing grounds but largely also through epidemic diseases and especially smallpox which ships touching on their way from India brought into the country They are now as a distinct race almost extinct in the colony though a good deal of their blood has passed Into the mixed black population of Cape Town and its neighborhooda population the other elements ele-ments of which are Malays and west coast negroes the descendants of slaves imported im-ported in the last century Farther north on the south side of the Orange river and beyond it in Namagualand small tribes cognate to the Hottentots still wander over the dreary plains Very different from these weak Bushmen Bush-men and Hottentots was and is the third native race those who are called Bantu a word meaning people by themselves and Kafirs by Europeans I The word Kafir Is Arable and means an I infidel literally one who denies It is applied by Mussulmans not merely to these South Africans but to other heathens as for instance by the Afghans Afgh-ans to the Idolaters of Kafiristan in the HinduKush mountains The Portuguese probably took the name from the Arabs whom they found already settled on the east coast These Bantu tribesif we may class those as Bantus who speak languages of what is called the Bantu typefill all east Africa from the regions of the Upper Nile southward Those who dwell south of the Zambesi are generally strong and well made men I sometimes as black as a Gulf of Guinea negro sometimes verging on a brown tint and though they have the woolly hair and thick lips generally characteristic characteris-tic of the negro individuals are often found among them whose cast of features suggest an admixture of Semitic blood They are more prolific than the Hottentots Hotten-tots as well as physically stronger and better made and they were further advanced ad-vanced In the arts of life Some of the tribes dug out and worked iron and copper cop-per all of them used iron The chief wealth lay in their cattle horses they did not possess but where the land was fit for tillage they cultivated it They had no religion except in a sort of magic and that worship of the ghosts of ancestors cestors which seems to be the most widely wide-ly diffused of all human superstitions Instead of a priesthood there were wiz ards or medicinemen often powerful as the denouncers of those whom the chief wished to put to death Intellectually they were very much upon the level of the native races of West Africa Impres lons of South Africa by James Bryce M P in the June Century |