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_ If all these statements were real facts--and we shall presently see that they are not--they would prove no more than that the modern Hottentots, like their neighbors, the Bushmen, are hen-pecked. Barrow (I., 286) speaks of the "timid and pusillanimous mind which characterizes the Hottentots," and elsewhere he says that their
"impolitic custom of hording together in families,
and of not marrying out of their own kraals, has,
no doubt, tended to enervate this race of men,
and reduced them to their present degenerated
condition, which is that of a languid, listless,
phlegmatic people, in whom the prolific powers of
nature seem to be almost exhausted."
It does not, therefore, surprise us to be told (by Thunberg) that "it frequently happens that a woman marries two husbands." And these women are anything but feminine and lovable. One of the champions of the Hottentots, Theophilus Hahn, says (_Globus_, XII., 304) of the Namaqua women that they love to torture their slaves: "When they cudgel a slave one can easily read in their faces the infernal joy it gives them to witness the tortures of their victims." He often saw women belaboring the naked back of a slave with branches of the cruel _acacia delinens_, and finally rub salt or saltpetre into the wounds. Napier (I., 59) says of the Hottentots, that
"if the parents of a newly born child found him or her _de
trop_, the poor little wretch was either mercilessly buried
alive, or exposed in a thicket, there to be devoured by
beasts of prey."
While he had to take it for granted that there must be love-songs among these cruel Hottentots, Jakobowski had no trouble in finding songs of hate, of defiance, and revenge. Even these cannot be cited without omitting objectionable words. Here is one, properly expurgated:
"Take this man away from me that he may be beaten
and his mother weep over him and the worms eat him....
Let this man be brought before your counsel and
cudgelled until not a shred of flesh remains on
his ... that the worms would care to eat; for
the reason that he has done me such a painful injury," etc. _
Read next: How The Hottentot Woman "Rules At Home"
Read previous: False Facts Regarding Hottentots
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