Reynard the fox in South Africa

REYNARD THE FOX IN SOUTH AFRICA;
OR,
W. H. I. BLEEK, Ph.D.
LONDON:
THIS BOOK BELONGS TO
CHILDREN IN SOUTH AFRICA AND ELSEWHERE,
AND TO THEIR FRIEND
SIR GEORGE GREY, K.C.B.,
My dear Sir George,
Some questions of no trifling importance and interest are raised by the appearance of such an unlooked-for mine of literary lore, particularly as to the originality of these Fables. Whether they are indeed the real offspring of the desert, and can be considered as truly indigenous Native literature, or whether they have been either purloined from the superior white race, or at least brought into existence by the stimulus which contact with the latter gave to the Native mind (like that resulting in the invention of the Tshiroki and Vei alphabets) may be matters of dispute for some time to come, and it may require as much research as was expended upon the solving of the riddle of the originality of the Ossianic poems.
This similarity in the disposition of nations can in itself indeed hardly be considered as a valid proof of common ancestry; but if there be other grounds to make us believe that the nations in question, or at least their languages, are of common origin, it may render us more inclined to assume that such a similarity in their literary taste is derived also from the same source.
The great ethnological difference between the Hottentots and the black nations of South Africa has been a marked fact from almost the earliest acquaintance of Europeans with these parts, and occasional stray guesses (for example, in R. Moffat’s “Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa,” 1842, p. 6), have already for some time pointed to a North African origin for the Hottentots.