The following pages are the result of an extensive study of the records available on the subject, combined with much valuable information supplied to me chiefly by educated Natives, Missionaries, and a large number of others, such as some of the Cape Civil Servants, who had to deal with the aborigine in the early days of European occupation of the country. To all of whom I wish to record my best thanks, more especially to Mr. W. Hammond Tooke for the Chapter on the Bantu Nation; Mr. Andrew Smith, of St. Cyrus, for assisting in gathering information, and for his valuable assistance in the preparing of the Chapter on the Herb treatment of Disease; Mr. W. C. Scully, of the Cape Civil Service; and to Mr. J. M’tombeni, Native Teacher, for gathering and editing much valuable information from amongst the Kaffirs.
I trust that the result here set forth, which they have assisted in producing, may be of some value, and not wholly disappointing to them.
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CHAPTER I.
BANTU TRIBES
The Bantu race comprises one great family extending over all Central and South Africa, South of a line drawn roughly from the Kamerun to the Pokomo River, but excluding the South West corner—Great Namaqualand and Western Cape Colony—which from time immemorial has been occupied by Hottentots.
Although strictly speaking the term “Bantu” is philological, and this classification based on linguistic grounds, and although the different tribes it embraces show largely but in varying degrees that they result from a mixture with oriental or negro blood, yet the similarity of speech, custom and religion, warrant our treating them collectively as one homogenous ethnological group. [[2]]
It is now a generally received opinion that the Bantu originally emanated from a region in the Congo basin, probably north of that river where it receives the tributary Mubangi, and that the Europeans first met the Kaffirs as the vanguard of this invading army when their long march southward to the furthest extremity of the Continent was nearly completed.