nance may not be seen an expression of real goodness of heart. If
he has had the same experience among that race, which I have, he
will discover it most clearly.
Juli was a Hottentot of the mixed race j as were also his father
and mother. The hair of men of this class, being longer and looser
or less in tufts, than in the genuine Hottentot, is well expressed in
the engraving. His features do not differ very widely from those of
the unmixed race. His age was, probably, nearer fifty than forty;
as he was the oldest man of the party, whom I took into the Interior.
His father lived in the vicinity of Algoa-bay, but was killed by
the Caffres while hunting in the Zuureveld. The mother, induced
by distress at her loss, resolved to quit a district which had been
fatal to her husband, and removed with her two children, a girl and
a boy, to the western side of the colony. Here she was still more
unfortunate; for, falling in the way of a brutal colonist who resided
on the river which runs through that tract, he seized her children,
then nearly grown up and strong enough to be made useful on his
farm, and drove her away from the place, as she herself appeared too
old to render him much service by her labor. He therefore procured
Juli and his sister to be registered in the field-cornet’s books, as
legally bound to serve him for twenty-five years; which was in fact
to make them his actual slaves for that time. The mother clung to
her children, wishing to resist this unjust seizure, and desiring to be
permitted either to take them away, or to live on the farm with
them; but the farmer repeatedly drove her off, and at last, with a
resolution to deter her from coming there again, he one evening
flogged her so unmercifully that she died the next morning! This,
and the harsh treatment which he himself received, were sufficient
to drive Juli to despair; and he, in consequence, took the first
favorable opportunity of making his escape.
This is a tale which he several times repeated to me during my
travels; but as the colonist is now dead, it rests alone upon his
veracity. Yet as the word of a Hottentot gains, in general, but little
credit in the Colony, so has his story, if he ever dared to make a
foimal complaint: which I believe he never ventured to do. If he
VOL. II, y