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The first part gives a short description of the Cape, and the adjacent districts, which seems drawn from the authority of Kolben, in too many particulars; the second part contains the Journal of the Travels: and it is more full and instructive on objects of natural history, than on the customs and manners of the people. The plates of these are very valuable.
Journal du Voyage fait au Cap de Bonne Espérance. Paris, 1673. 12mo. This work is well known to astronomers; but it also deserves to be perused by those who wish to detect the errors of Kolben, and by the light which it throws on the manners of the Hottentots. Description du Cap de Bonne Espérance. Amsterdam, 1778. 8vo.
The Hottentots are adjudged atheistic on the testimony of Le Vaillant, in spite of the united witness of Kolben, Saar, Tachard, Boeving, and Campbell. The Kaffirs are declared to be destitute of religion on the statements of Burchel, while Livingstone and Cazalis have given clear accounts of the religion of the different Kaffir tribes.
If anything is given to a Hottentot, he at once divides it among all present a habit which, as is known, so much struck Darwin among the Fuegians. He cannot eat alone, and, however hungry, he calls those who pass by to share his food. And when Kolben expressed his astonishment thereat, he received the answer. "That is Hottentot manner."
But this is not Hottentot manner only: it is an all but universal habit among the "savages." Kolben, who knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, could not praise their tribal morality highly enough. "Their word is sacred," he wrote. They know "nothing of the corruptness and faithless arts of Europe."
Kropotkin further says: "Let me remark that when Kolben says 'they are certainly the most friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one another that ever appeared on the earth' he wrote a sentence which has continually appeared since in the description of savages.
But were there no angry passions of a different sort, the animosities which attend an opposition of interest, should bear a proportion to the supposed value of the subject. "The Hottentot nations," says Kolben, "trespass on each other by thefts of cattle and of women; but such injuries are seldom committed, except with a view to exasperate their neighbours, and bring them to a war."
P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, translated from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i. pp. 59, 71, 333, 336, etc. Quoted in Waitz's Anthropologie, ii. 335 seq.
Kropotkin, speaking of the Hottentots, quotes the German author P. Kolben who travelled among them in 1275 or so. "He knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, but could not praise their tribal morality highly enough. Their word is sacred, he wrote, they know nothing of the corruption and faithless arts of Europe.
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