when a few planks, properly put together, would enable them
to carry over any fort o f carriage, cattle, or horfes, with fafety
and convenience, in five minutes.
The women o f the African peafantry pafs a life of the moft
liftlefs inactivity. The miftrefs o f the family, with her coffeepot
conftantly boiling before heron a fmall table, feems fixed to
her chair like a piece o f furniture. This good lady, born in
the wilds of Africa, and educated among flaves and Hottentots,
has little idea o f what, in a ftate of fociety, conftitutes female
delicacy. She makes no fcruple of having her legs and feet
wafhed in warm water by a Have before ftrangers ; an operation
that is regularly performed every evening. I f the motive
of fuch a cuftom were that of cleanlinefs, the pradtice of it
would deferve praife ; but to fee the tub with the fame water
palTed round through all the branches of the family, according
to feniority, is apt to create ideas o f a very different nature.
Moft of them go conftantly without ftockings and fhoes, even
when the thermometer is down to the freezing point. They
generally, however, make ufe o f fmall ftoves to place the feet
on. The young girls fit with their hands before them as liftlefs
as their mothers. Moft of them, in the diftant diftridts,
can neither read nor write, fo that they have no mental re-
fources whatfoever. Luckily, perhaps, for them, the paucity
of ideas prevents time from hanging heavy on their hands.
The hiftory o f a day is that of their whole lives. They hear
or fpeak o f nothing but that fuch-a-one is going to the city, or
to church, or to be married, or that the Bosjefmans have ftolen
the cattle of fuch-a-one, or the locufts eaten their corn. The
young
young people have no meetings at fixed periods, as in moft
country-places, for mirth and recreation. No fairs, no dancing,
no mufic, nor amufement of any fort. To the cold phlegmatic
temper and inadtive way of life may perhaps be owing the
prolific tendency of all the African peafantry. Six or feven
children in a family are Confidered as very.few; from a dozen
to twenty are not uncommon; and moft o f them marry very
young, fo that the population of the colony is rapidly in-
creafing. Several, however, o f the children die in their
infancy, from fwellings in the throat, and from eruptions
of the fame kind they are fubjedt to in the Cape. Very few
inftances'of longevity occur. The manner o f life they lead
is perhaps lefs favorable for A. prolonged exiftence than the
nature o f the climate. The difeafes of which they generally
die in the country are bilious and putrid fevers and
dropfies.
The men are in general much above the middle fize, very
tall and ftout, but ill made, loofely put together, aukward, and
inadtive. Very few have thofe open ingenuous countenances
that among the peafantry of many parts of Europe fpeak their
fimplicity and innocence. The defcendants o f French families
are now fo intermarried with thofe of the original fettlers, that no
diftindtion, except the names, remains. And it is a remarkable
fadt that not a word of the French language is fpoken of under-
ftood by any of the peafantry, though there be many ftill living
whofe parents were both of that nation. Neither is a
French book of any kind to be feen in their houfes. It would
feem as if thefe perfecuted refugees had ftudied to conceal from
m their