chap, xxvii THE VILLAGE OF CAPE TOWN 303
much
pleased also because our captain gave each of them two cups of spirits
to drink. Neither men nor women have the slightest shame about exposing
their nudity, and they live almost like beasts.
When
they see vessels arriving they drive cattle to the shore and bring what
they have to barter for tobacco, spirits, and beads of crystal and
agate, which are cheap at Surat, and for some hardware. When they are
not content with what is offered them they immediately take to flight,
and at the sound of a whistle all their animals follow them, and you
see no more of them. Some persons on one occasion, saw them fly, and
fired musket-shots in order to slay the cattle, but for some years
past, these Cafres have not brought their beasts, and there has been
much trouble in inducing them to return. It is a great convenience for
the vessels which touch there to obtain supplies, and the Dutch have
had good reason for building a fort there. There is now a fine village
inhabited by people of all nationalities who live with the Dutch, and
all kinds of grains which are imported, both from Europe and Asia, on
being sown, grow much better than in the places whence they have been
brought. It is a very good country, as I have said, at the 35th degree
.and some minutes of latitude, and it is neither the air nor the heat
which makes these Cafres so black as they are. Desiring to know the
explanation of it, and why they smell so strongly, I inquired from a
young girl who was taken as soon as her mother had brought her forth,
and was nursed and reared in the fort, being as white as one of our
European women. She told me that the reason that the Cafres are so
black, is that they rub themselves with an ointment which they make of
different simples known to them, and that if they do not rub themselves
often, and as soon as they are born, they become dropsical like other
blacks of Africa, and like the Abyssinians, and the inhabitants of
Saba, who have one leg twice the size of the other ;l few
of these people live more than forty years. It is true that these
Cafres, brutal as they are, have nevertheless a special knowledge
1 The disease known as elephantiasis. On the use of grease by Cafres see J. 6. Wood, Natural History of Man, i. 36 f.
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