animal’s face when walking. They were confidered as excellent
beafts for riding or for bearing hurthens. This variety of
the common ox had not the dorfal tuft which the loofe-horned
ox of Abyffinia is defcribed to poffefs.
While the men are employed in rearing and attending the
cattle, the women are engaged in the affairs o f the houfe, and
in cultivating the ground. Thefe, with the manufadture of
bafkets with the Cyperus grafs, and of earthen pots for boiling
their meat or corn, which are the chief part of their houfehold
utenfils, the making their fkin-cloaks, and nurfing their
children, furniih fufficient employment for the women. They
are faid to be exceedingly prolific ; that twins are almoft as
frequent as fingle births, and that it is no uncommon thing for
a woman to have three at a time. Their children, foon after
birth, are fuffered to crawl about perfeitly naked; and at
fix or feven months they are able to run. A cripple or deformed
perfon is never feen. The Dutch have an idea that if
a Kaffer child fhould be born imperfeft, the parents immediately
ftrangle it. Gaika s mother feemed fhocked at fuch a queition
being put to her; and affined me that a woman who could
fuffer fuch aii unnatural crime to be committed, would be
chaced out of fociety. A high degree of civilization may indeed
dull the feelings of nature, and policy may, fornetimes
filently approve of.crimes committed againftit; but a favage
feels the full force of parental affedtion.
There is perhaps no nation on earth, taken colledtively, that
can produce fo fine a race of men as the Kaffers: they are tall,
f lo u t ,
flout, mufcular, well made, elegant figures. They are exempt,
indeed, from many of thofe caufes that, in more civilized focie-
ties, contribute to impede the growth of the body. Their diet
is fimple; their exercife of a falutary nature; their body is neither
cramped nor encumbered by clothing ; the air they breathe
is pure; their reft is not difturbed by violent love, nor their
minds ruffled by jealoufy ; they are free from thofe licentious
appetites which proceed frequently more from a depraved imagination
than a real natural want: their frame is neither fhaken
nor enervated by the ufe of intoxicating liquors, which they
are not acquainted with ; they eat when hungry, and fleep
when nature demands it. With fuch a kind of life, languor
and melancholy have little to do. The countenance of a Kaffer
is always cheerful; and the whole of his demeanor befpeaks
content and peace of mind.
Though black, or very nearly fo, they have not one line of
the African negro in the compofition o f their perfons. The
comparative anatomift might be a little perplexed in placing the
ikull of a Kaffer in the chain, fo ingenioufly put together by
him, comprehending all the links from the mod perfect European
to the Ourang-Outang, and thence through all the
monkey-tribe. The head of a Kaffer is not elongated : the
frontal and the occiputal bones form nearly a femicircle ; and a
line from the forehead to the chin drawn over the nofe is convex
like that of moft; Europeans. In fhort, had not Nature
bellowed upon him the dark-coloring principle. that anatomifts
have difcovered to be owing to a certain gelatinous fluid lying
between