Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa — John Shaqi
Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South AfricaAnderson, Andrew A.
History
Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa
Anderson, Andrew A.
Africa, Southern -- Description and travel; Anderson, Andrew A. -- Travel -- Africa, Southern
Wishing to see them, we rode over, a distance of some seven miles, where
we found them confined in an outhouse, squatting on the floor, looking
anything but amiable; they were poor specimens of humanity. We had them
brought out for a closer inspection. The woman was not old or young, of
a yellowish-white colour, a few little tufts of wool on the head; eyes
she had, but the lids were so closed they were not to be seen, although
she could see between them perfectly; no nose, only two orifices,
through which she breathed, with thin projecting lips, and sharp chin,
with broad cheek-bones, her spine curved in the most extraordinary
manner, consequently the stomach protruded in the same proportion, with
thin, calfless legs, and with that wonderful formation peculiar to this
Bushmen tribe, and slightly developed in the Hottentot and Korannas.
The two little girls--the eldest did not seem more than ten or twelve--
were of the same type, the woman measured four feet one inch in height.
The old Boer wanted to shoot them, but his vrow wished to keep and make
servants of them. Their language was a succession of clicks with no
guttural sound in the throat, like that of the Hottentot and Koranna
tribes, but both languages assimilated so closely that it is clear the
Hottentot and Koranna have partly descended from this pure breed, for a
pure breed they are, and may be the remnants of almost a distinct race
that lived on the face of this earth in prehistoric ages.
The quarter of the globe in which they are found, at the extreme end of
a large continent, in a rugged and mountainous country, a locality well
adapted to preserve them from utter extinction, may be the cause of
their preservation; at any rate, there are no other people in the world
like them, and their having a language almost without words except
clicks, is a most peculiar feature in connection with this entirely
distinct race, and for anthropological science, these people should be
preserved, that is the pure breed, unmixed by Hottentot or Koranna
blood.
Leaving the Boer farm, after the usual cup of coffee, we skirted the
hills which ran out in grand and lofty spurs, broken here and there by
perpendicular cliffs, many hundred feet deep, clothed with subtropical
plants and shrubs, with beautiful creepers climbing among the projecting
rocks, and hanging in festoons, with crimson and yellow pods,
contrasting so beautifully with the rich green around.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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