The so-called yellow men.—On the 4th of[84] August, 1782, the "Grosvenor" Indiaman was wrecked on the coast of Natal. Of the crew who escaped, some reached the Cape and others remained amongst the natives. In 1790, an expedition was undertaken in search of them.
In this expedition, Mr. Van Reenens, considered that he had discovered a village where the people were descended from the whites, and in which there were three old women who had been wrecked when very young. They could not tell to what country they belonged; were treated as superior beings; and, when offered a safe convoy to the Cape, were at first pleased with the prospect, but eventually refused to leave their children and grandchildren. Now, whatever these old women were, they were not of the crew of the "Grosvenor," and I doubt whether they were Europeans at all.
Again—Mr. Thomson, when at Litaku, heard of yellow cannibals, with long hair, whose invasions were the dread of the country; a statement which merely means that some tribes of South Africa, are lighter coloured, and more savage in their appetite than others.
Lastly, Lieutenant Farewell saw one of these yellow men at Natal, who was described as a cannibal, and who shrunk abashed from the lieutenant.
Be it so. The evidence that "there are descendants of Europeans and Africans now widely[85] diffusing their offspring throughout the country; whose services might be turned to good account in civilizing the native tribes," is still incomplete.
Mauritius.—The coloured population, which is far greater than that of the white, consists in the Mauritius of—
1. True Africans—chiefly from the east coast, and, consequently, of the Kaffre stock; the word being used in its most general sense. Darker than the Kaffres of the Cape, they, nevertheless, recede from the Negro type in the shape of the jaw, lips, and forehead. The hair also is less woolly. They are strong and powerful individuals.
2. Malagasi, or natives of Madagascar.—These are not Africans to the same extent as the Kaffres of the coast. As far back as the time of Reland it was known that the affinities of the Malagasi language were with the Malay and Polynesian tongues of Asia; but it was also known that the similarity in physiognomy was less than that of language. Hence came a conflict of difficulties. The speech indicated one origin, the colour another—whilst the fact of an island so near to Africa, and so far from Malacca, as Madagascar, being other than what its geographical position indicated, is, and has been, a mystery. Some writers have assumed an intermixture of blood; others have limited the Malay element to the[86] dominant population. Lastly, Mr. Crawfurd has denied the inferences from the similarity of language in toto; considering that there is "nothing in common between the two races, and nothing in common between the character of their languages." The comparative philologist is slow to admit this—indeed, he denies it.
The blacks form the great majority of the coloured population. Besides these, however, there are—
3. Arabs.