To a European, their language appears to be scarcely articulate; besides which it is distinguished by a very remarkable singularity. At very frequent intervals, while they are speaking, they cluck with the tongue against the roof of the mouth: these clucks do not appear to have any meaning, but rather to divide what they say into sentences. Most of these Hottentots speak Dutch, without any peculiarity of pronunciation. They are all modest, even to sheepishness; for it was not without the greatest difficulty that we could persuade any of them to dance, or even to speak in their own language to each other, in our presence. We did however both see them dance, and hear them sing; their dances are, by turns, active and sluggish to excess; sometimes consisting of quick and violent motions, with strange distortions of the body, and unnatural leaps backwards and forwards, with the legs crossing each other; and being sometimes so spiritless that the dancer only strikes the ground first with one foot and then with the other, neither changing place nor moving any other part of his body: the songs also are alternately to quick and slow movements, in the same extremes as the dance. We made many enquiries concerning these people of the Dutch, and the following particulars are related upon the credit of their report. Within the boundaries of the Dutch settlements, there are several nations of these people, who very much differ from each other in their customs and manner of life: all, however, are friendly and peaceable, except one clan that is settled to the eastward, which the Dutch call _Bosch men_, and these live entirely by plunder, or rather by theft; for they never attack their neighbours openly, but steal the cattle privately in the night. They are armed however to defend themselves, if they happen to be detected, with lances or assagays, and arrows, which they know how to poison by various ways, some with the juice of herbs, and some with the venom of the serpent, called _Cobra di Capelo_; in the hands of these people a stone also is a very formidable weapon, for they can throw it with such force and exactness as repeatedly to hit a dollar at the distance of a hundred paces. As a defence against these freebooters, the other Indians train up bulls, which they place round their towns in the night, and which, upon the approach of either man or beast, will assemble and oppose them, till they hear the voice of their masters encouraging them to fight, or calling them off, which they obey with the same docility as a dog. Some nations have the art of melting and preparing copper, which is found among them, probably native; and of this they make broad plates, which they wear as ornaments upon their foreheads. Some of them also know how to harden bits of iron, which they procure from the Dutch, and form into knives, so as to give them a temper superior to that of any they can buy.