OFFICERS WHO FELL IN THE EARLY BATTLES OF THE TRANSVAAL WAR
CHAPTER VIII.
The Native Races of South Africa.
The Bushmen
The physical and mental differences between the three chief native races of South Africa have been very great. The genuine aborigines, or Bushmen, ranked amongst the lowest of human races, and maybe placed upon much the same level as the Fuegians or the Black-fellows of Australia. Though primarily natives of the coast they seem to have become scattered in after times throughout the region from the Cape to the Zambesi. Nomadic by nature, knowing nothing of agriculture, and not even owning cattle, they wandered here and there, living upon such wild animals as they could kill with poisoned arrows, or upon wild fruits and the roots of plants. They were small in stature and untamably savage, swift in passage from place to place, and capable of enduring the severest fatigue. Almost inevitably, the pressure of a civilization which had to often shoot them in self-defence, the influence of progressive settlements which destroyed the game upon which they lived, and the force of stronger types of savagery which bore down on them from the north, have in the end blotted the Bushmen out of existence.
The Hottentots
Superior in some respects were the Hottentots. Though small in stature they were not by any means pygmies, and they lived in a better manner than the Bushmen knew anything of. They possessed sheep and many lean cattle, which they drove hither and thither over vast tracts of country, doing a little intermittent hunting, fighting occasionally with one another and living in a tribal system which the lower racial type found it impossible to emulate. Like the Bushmen their muscular power was slight, their hair grew in woolly tufts upon the skull, and they were of a yellowish-black colour. They made fairly good servants after a period of subjugation, but suffered in numbers very greatly from the spread of small-pox and similar epidemics, which were at times introduced into the country from the ships of the white man. In 1713 immense numbers perished from this cause. The Hottentot was for many decades in the succeeding century a favourite subject of missionary labour in Cape Colony, but it is to be feared that the degraded elements which are to be found in every white community, with the additional factor of an absolute contempt for all natives amongst the Dutch of South Africa, had far greater influence for evil upon the unfortunate tribes than English legislation and Christian efforts had for good.
The Bantu and its Sub-Divisions
A far more important native race than either of these, and one which has taken a place in history as distinct as that of the Indian in America or the Maori in New Zealand, is the Bantu, with its many tribal sub-divisions. Popularly known as Kaffirs from the earliest days of Portuguese discovery and slave raids, there seems little reason to doubt that they have gradually drifted southward from the Upper Nile and the Nyanza Lake region; while the brown colour of many of them would appear to indicate an admixture of Arab blood from settlers and traders along the coast of the Indian Ocean, the majority are black and they all possess the thick lips, woolly hair and scanty beard of the typical negro. Usually they are strong and well-made, fierce in battle, savage in their punishments, brutal in many of their customs. Their bravery is of a high order, as a rule, but has varied somewhat in quality, and the various tribes in later days have developed special lines of intelligence. At the present time, for instance, the Zulus and the Matabele are the most noted for courage and for fighting skill of a savage sort, the Fingoes show some natural adaptiveness for trade and barter, and the Basutos, under the influence, no doubt, of English contiguity and friendliness have given distinct indications of steady industry—a most unusual quality amongst natives.