the women they have made prisoners, and also the slaves, whom they call Moutianka. Each woman belongs to the husband who has bought her for a dozen of beeves, and every wife builds the hut in which she lives; the husband, going round, from one to another, inhabits by turns, each hut. The women breed very often, and become mothers at thirteen years of age. In each tribe, they have a kind of aristocratic government, headed by a chief. They become decrepit early, and have but little beard. Some are cannibals, and swallow the flesh they can tear from their enemies. Their intellect is greater; their superstition and credulity less than that of most negroes; but still they are heathens, and very ignorant; on that account, they are called kafr by Arabians and Moors; the word kafr meaning infidel. Many are Mahometans, as they like the dogma of fatality. Altho' they take a pleasure in dancing and other amusements, still they are not so exceedingly fond of them as negroes are. The latter forget all their miseries, if they hear playing upon an instrument, and if slavers who transport negroes from Africa to the islands of America, did not take care to amuse them by some music, the poor beings would die heart-broken. That readiness in forgetting his misfortunes is a gift which nature has granted to the unhappy negro, and which she grants to every weak being. Thus, we become accustomed to pain as well as to pleasure, and in the process of time every thing becomes indifferent to us. HOTTENTOTS, AND PAPOUS. A more projecting mouth, a face of a triangular and pointing shape, a facial angle of about 75 degrees, a brown skin, eyes at a great distance from each other, and always half shut, a nose entirely flat, and very broad, lips thicker than those of negroes, hair like flocks of wool, and knotty, very prominent cheek bones, and a forehead exceedingly flat, are characteristics by which we distinguish this race from the blacks, or that of negroes and Caffres.* In most skulls of Hottentots, which have been examined, the occiput is pointed, so that the back part of the head is narrow, precisely the reverse of European and Calmuc skulls. Most Africans living in the interior of Caffraria, have small heads, and a pointing occiput. Litchtenstein, who observed the Boschimans, says that the head is flattened at the top. Such a diminution of the cerebral capacity is a characteristic common to all Hottentots. The skulls of Papous are larger towards the occiput, and though the forehead is low, and the depth of the occiput small, the *The true negro is of a deep shining black-the Caffre of a yellow copper color, with long wooly hair. The natives of Van Dieman's Land, New Caledonia, and Papous, are of a soot color, with frizzled hair. Hottentots, like Southern Monguls, are of a chesnut colour, but their hair is wooly. Forster rema ked that the skulls of the inhabitants of Mallicolo were of a singular shape, more depressed than those of any other nation; the complexion and features rough, the cheek bones and those of the face large, their hair wooly, the ears and nose pierced; the limbs very slender; and the abdomen tied hard with a cord. The whole physiognomy indicates the most brutal disposition. -Observations sur l'espèce humaine, vol. 5, du 2e. Voyage de Cook, p. 220, trad. Fr. in 4to. head appears larger than that of a Hottentot. Their natural disposition is very stupid; their minds incapable of the smallest conception; they are more lazy and careless than any of the human species; they are timorous, but fight desperately among themselves when determined. Nothing can surpass the imbecility of this good natured people; incapable of an atrocious crime, their weakness of character prompts them to yield to oppression; but Hottentots are not good slaves, for they prefer death to long hard labour, and in as much as they remain indifferent to the wants of domestic life, they are inclined to all brutal passions, to dancing, lust, drunkenness, gluttony, sleep, &c. They appear to be altogether "corporeal," having scarcely a notion of a superior being, and no idea embodied with any but carnal pleasures. There is but one step between their intellect and that of the orang-outang; in short, they lead an animal life. This race is divided into two varieties, or principal families, in the Austral hemisphere, to which it seems to be entirely confined. 1st. The Hottentot stock is scattered all over the extremity of the south of Africa, from Cape Negro to the Cape of Good Hope, and from there to Monomotapa. It includes the Namaquas, Heusaquas, Gonaquas, Chamouquas, Gouriquas, Gassiquas, Sonqoas, the inhabitants of the country of Natal, the Houssanas, and other tribes of the same kind, who live in a state of barbarism, or in raising cattle. The natural and moral qualities of nations residing east of the Cape of Good Hope, are superior to those who live at the West, though the reverse is true of the brute creation.* There are Hottentots, called by the Dutch, Boushuanas, who inhabit caverns, woods, scouring the country on a sudden, living upon plunder and wild roots, hardly speaking any language, always naked, and as wild as the beasts of the forests. The wretchedness to which they are reduced, compels them to abandon their old men and wo *Levaillant, 2d Voyage, vol. 3, p. 5, Paris, an. Iv. 4to. men in dreadful deserts or caverns*. The other Hottentots have neither laws, nor established rules; but being mild, peaceable and good natured, no harm is to be apprehended from them; for it appears that laws and government become more perfect and strong, in proportion as men are capable of doing wrong to each other; so that we can estimate the wickedness and corruption of a nation by the multiplicity of her laws and social fetters. The constitution of Hottentots is extremely weak, or lymphatic; their joints are small; their antipathy to work very great; the iris of their eyes is of a chesnut color; their eyelids are drawn up obliquely, like those of the Chinese, although their sight and senses are perfect. They prefer idleness even to pleasure, and in the opinion of Hottentots, to think is to work, and all work is the plague of life.”† They have sometimes two wives, and although adultery among them is looked upon as a capital crime, yet a woman is often allowed an additional husband. If a Hottentot woman gets twins, and cannot nurse them both, she kills the weaker, or the female. They also practice the same atrocities on maimed children.§ Nothing can be more stupid and filthy than a Hottentot. Always greased with a mixture of tallow and soot, or covered with cow dung, they wear as bracelets, straps cut out of a raw skin, which they allow to rot on their bodies; they never wash the bowels of animals, which they eat raw, and keep their milk in very dirty goat skin bottles. Always covered with a crust of filth, they are to be seen basking in the sun upon the sand, and dozing with a pipe in their mouths.Tobacco is a necessary, without which a Hottentot cannot live. He smokes from morning till night, and will submit *Thunberg, Voyage, vol. 1, p. 240. + Peter Kolbe-Description du cap de Bonne Espérance, French translation, Amsterdam, 1743, 3 vols. in 12 mo. vol. 1, part 1, ch. 6, no. 10. See also Boeving, Relation des Hottentots, p. 8. Thunberg, Voyage, vol. 1, p. 239. § Ibid, vol. 1, p. 240. to every thing, provided you promise to give him tobacco. The women also smoke a great deal; they have long and flabby breasts; and can suckle a child on their back, by throwing the breast over their shoulders. The Hottentot has hardly any kind of religion, only a sort of worship for "Fetichs." Their sorcerers frighten them with stupid tales of evil spirits. Their language is pronounced with a clack of the tongue, which resembles the clacking of a turkey. The 2d. The other family, or variety, of this race, is that of the Papous, of New Guinea, of the savages of Australasia, and of those of New Caledonia. Generally speaking, they are very brutal. Several English travellers have fancifully described the inhabitants from New Holland to Port Jackson and Paramatta in a flattering manner. truth is, they are the ugliest of all men, and rank nearest to orang outangs. The men have a large head, a chin at a long distance from the sinciput, woolly hair, small, haggard eyes set near each other, a broad and turned up nose, in the cartilage of which are stuck bones or feathers; a wild and bestial mouth, broad shoulders, a swollen abdomen, long thighs, and legs without calfs, not bigger than their arms; a voluminous and misshaped scrotum. The women have pendulous breasts, and the last joint of their left little finger is cut off. Their pudenda are thickly covered with hairs; the backs of their children of both sexes are also covered with short, thick, woolly hairs, a tawny skin; such is the picture of these wretched nations. If we add to it the misery and famine by which they are compelled to devour without disgust dead bodies in a state of half putrefaction, and to eat up every kind of shell-fish, roots, fish, &c.; if we fancy the disgusting lasciviousness of women and little girls already infected with venereal diseases; if we consider the miserable life they spend in the hollow of trees, caverns, or under huts, where they cannot get access except by crawling, we will find them undoubtedly the most unfortunate people on earth. Yet they show skill in hunting, fishing, and in the use of canoes made out of the |