FOOTNOTES:
[174] These are not the real Kaffre prefixes, being merely meant for the sake of illustration, they are arbitrary syllables.
[175] Dr. Adamson's speech, at the Wesleyan Missionary Meeting, in 1846.—Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. i. No. 4.
[176] Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. i. No. 4.
C.
HOTTENTOT ATLANTIDÆ.
The Hottentot stock has a better claim to be considered as forming a second species of the genus Homo than any other section of mankind. It can be shown, however, that the language is no more different from those of the world in general than they are from each other.
THE HOTTENTOT ATLANTIDÆ.
Area. The southern extremity of Africa. Encroached upon by a. the Kaffres; b. the Dutch and English of the Cape.
Divisions. 1. The Hottentots. 2. The Saabs.
Physical conformation. Stature, low; limbs, slight; colour, more brown or yellow than black (that of new-born children said to be nearly white); cheek-bones, prominent; nasal profile, depressed; hair, in tufts rather than equally distributed over the head.—Thus described by Barrow: "It does not cover the whole surface of the scalp, but grows in small tufts, at certain distances from each other, and when clipped short, has the appearance and feel of a hard shoe-brush, except that it is curled and twisted into small, round lumps, about the size of a marrow-fat pea. When suffered to grow, it hangs on the neck in hard, twisted tassels, like a fringe."[177]—Eyes, oblique; vision, acute; cranium, Mongoliform with wide orbits, brakhykephalic, nasal profile extremely flat, broad at the root; and the chin, long, forward, and thin.
Pelvis, with a maximum difference in structure according as it is male or female; that of the former being strong and dense, that of the latter, light, and delicate. In both cases a minimum of diploe between the bony plates; ossa ilii, vertical; sacrum, narrow; conjugate diameter, short; neck of the thigh-bone, short, and with an oblique direction.[178]—Vrolik.—Oftener wedge-shaped or oblong, than oval, round, or square.—Weber.
Buttocks often steatomatous.[179]
Physical condition of area.—Karroos, i.e. elevated terraces and table-lands, with the soil dry, hard, clayey, fissured, rarely moistened with rain, and chiefly productive of the succulent classes of the vegetable kingdom.
Language.—Containing two inarticulate elements, viz. h (like other tongues), and a peculiar and characteristic click.
Intermixture.—Dutch, the Griquas of the Orange River being a mixed stock.
Habits.—Pastoral and hunter state; the latter exhibiting the lower forms of the type (i.e. the Saabs, or Bushmen, once disconnected from the others, and considered as forming a separate and more degraded class).
1.
HOTTENTOTS.
The extinct sections of the Hottentot division are:—
- Gunyeman, nearest the Cape.
- Kokhaqua, north of the Gunyeman.
- Sussaqua, Saldanha Bay.
- Odiqua.
- Khirigriquas, on Elephants' River.
- Koopmans.
- Hessaquas.
- Sonquas, east of the Cape.
- Dunquas.
- Damaquas.
- Guariquas.
- Honteniquas.
- Khantouers.
- Heykoms, as far on the north-east as Natal. Now replaced by Amakosah Kaffres.
Extant.—1. Gonaquas, south-east, on the Great Fish River. Probably replaced by Amakosah Kaffres.
2. Koraquas (Kora, Korana), north-east frontier, on the upper part of the Orange River.—In the more favourable localities the Koraquas are the tallest and best-looking men of the Hottentot stock. On the other hand, the Koras of the Hartebeest River, who formerly possessed, but have since lost their cattle, "exhibit the obvious process by which the Bushmen race have been originally driven back from the pastoral state, to that of the huntsman and robber."—Thompson's Travels in Southern Africa.—Prichard, vol. ii. p. 274.
3. Namaquas, separated from the Koranas by the Saabs. Occupants of the lower part of the Orange River, i. e. Little Namaqualand to the south, and Great Namaqualand to the north of its mouth.
2.
SAABS.
Locality.—The country between the Roggeveld and the middle portion of the Orange River; preeminently a Karroo.
Habits.—Hunters.
Language.—Wholly or nearly unintelligible to the other Hottentots.
Area.—Encroached upon the Koranas, who are their deadly enemies, and continually at war with them.
Are the Dammaras Kaffre or Hottentot? This has already been asked.
On the authority of Mr. Barrow, Prichard corrects Vater and Maltebrun for making the Dammaras Hottentot instead of Kaffre. The term, however, is a geographical rather than an ethnological one, comprising the tribes inhabiting those parts to the north and south of Waalvisch Bay, which are marked in the maps as sterile country, and lying between Benguela (where the languages belong to the Congo class of the Kaffre languages), and Namaqualand, where the inhabitants are Hottentots.
Now, geographically speaking, the Dammaras fall into two divisions: a,[180] the Dammaras of the Plains, or cattle Dammaras, and b, the Hill Dammaras. These latter inhabit the parts to the north and north-east of Namaqualand, and are Namaqua Hottentots. The former only belong to the Kaffre division, and extend as far north as 17° south latitude.
Forced downwards by the stronger tribes of the Kaffres, with their periphery overlaid, the Hottentots probably represent a population whose original area was extended much more towards the north—possibly as far as the central range of mountains. Nay, more—fragments of the stock may still, in central Africa, interrupt the Kaffre area, and form future discoveries in ethnology.
This possible northward extension of the Hottentot area has a bearing upon the questions connected with the population of Madagascar.
Overlaying of the periphery of an ethnological area.—Let two divisions of a certain class pass into each other by imperceptible degrees, and let one of the central portions of either class spread itself at the expense of the parts belonging to its circumference.
The effect which follows is, that those portions of this area, which represent the phænomena of transition, are overlaid, or overlapped; and that instead of two populations coming into contact by imperceptible degrees, they meet as separate classes, with as broad a line of demarcation between their respective representatives at the circumferences (peripheries) of their respective areas, as there was between their central or typical portions.
North-western America illustrates this. The more southern Algonkins have overlaid both the Algonkins of their own section, which approached the Eskimo, and the Eskimo of the opposite section, which approached the Algonkin. Hence the two populations meet as widely-separated, and broadly distinguished varieties of mankind.