chap, xxvii CAFRES AT THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE 301
the
other vessel from ours, and good fortune willed that the yards of the '
Maestricht', which were entangled in our rigging, broke away, and in
order to help matters we cut some of them with an axe. Thus, with great
trouble, the ' Maestricht' was disengaged, drifted all along the length
of our vessel, and when she was passing the prow she broke off the
beak-head.1
On
the fifty-fifth day of our voyage we came in view of the Cape of Good
Hope, and we remained outside five or six days, because the waves were
so high that we did not venture to enter the roads to cast anchor. This
was not because there was much wind, but because the south wind had
blown so long that it had raised a sea on the coast. When the sea
calmed down, we cast anchor, and this is what I have been able to
observe there.
Of all the races of men I have seen in my travels I have found none so hideous nor so brutal as the Comouks,2
whom I have mentioned in my account of Persia, and as the inhabitants
of the Cape of Good Hope, whom they call Cafres or Hottentots. When the
latter speak they make the tongue click (peter) in the mouth,
and although their voice is scarcely articulate they easily understand
one another. They have for their sole garments the skins of wild beasts
which they kill in the forests, and when it becomes cold in the winter
in this place, which is in 35° and some minutes of latitude, they turn
the fur inside, and when it is warm they turn it outside. But it is
only the better-to-do among them who are thus clothed, the others
having only some miserable scrap of cloth to cover their nakedness.
Both men and
1
' A small platform at the forepart of the upper deck; the part of a
ship in front of the forecastle, fastened to the stem, and supported by
the main knee.' (New\English Dictionary, s.v.)
2 Comouks in the original, and Comouchs in the Persian Travels, Book
III, chap, xi, where Tavernier describes them as robbers living at the
foot of the mountains of Comanie (i. e. the region between the Caucasus
and the north-western shores of the Caspian Sea, bounded on the north
by the Terek river). He distinguishes them from another people, the
Kalmouchs (Kalmucks), who, he says, inhabit the coast of the Caspian
between Moscovie and Great Tartary. For the Kumuk tribe see Keane, Man Past and Present, ed. 1920, p. 312
