The early Cape Hottentots

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Foreword.

Ten Rhyne's account of the Hottentots, unlike that of Dapper, is the product of personal acquaintance with the people. Although typical in some respects of the many descriptions compiled by transitory visitors to the Cape, it is well above the average in regard to the value and amount of information it contains. He nowhere states explicitly how long he was at the Cape, but it appears from the official records that the ship on which he must have arrived, the Ternaten, reached Table Bay on October 15, 1673, from Amsterdam, and departed for the East on November 10, after a stay of nearly four weeks. During this time he seems to have inquired fairly industriously into the natural resources of the country and the manners of its native inhabitants; and although his primary interest was obviously botanical, he also managed to learn a good deal about the Hottentots. It is evident from what he himself says that his information regarding the latter was obtained from all the available sources, his own observations, discussions with local European residents, and conversations with such Hottentots as could understand Dutch, of whom he names especially the famous Eva.

When stripped of its verbiage and classical allusions, his account of the Hottentots can by no means be regarded as detailed. Nevertheless his remarks on their mode of life, warfare, cattle trade and medical practices are particularly valuable additions to the scanty information previously published on these topies, and he also has some useful observations on their physical peculiarities and bodily mutilations. His list of tribes, too, is of considerable importance. It shows how within twenty years from the foundation of the settlement the groups in its immediate vicinity had degenerated into mere hangers-on and followers of the Dutch, how tribal distinctions were being lost and individual leaders coming into prominence, and how only the more remote tribes still retained their original character. It is significant too that he gives pride of place to the Hesequa, then valued as the principal market from which cattle could still be bartered in large quantities. On the other hand he says little that is new about Hottentot clothing, dwellings, food and social customs generally; his comments on their religion and system of government are distinctly weak; and occasionally he indulges in some rather fantastie statements suggesting a lack of critical ability or at least a naive credulity.

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Of the man himself but little appears to be known.^* He was born in Deventer about 1640, and studied at Leyden under the celebrated Dubois de la Boë. After practising in Holland for a while, he was appointed physician to the Dutch East India Company's settlement in Java; and it was on his way there in 1673 that he passed through the Cape. In Java he worked hard at his professional duties, also making a voyage to Japan, where he successfully treated the emperor for a grave illness. But he devoted himself especially to studies in natural history, above all botany, collecting numerous specimens of the exotic Eastern plants which he sent back to Holland. Of his later career hardly anything can be ascertained, not even the date of his death, but it appears from the title page of his book on the Hottentots that he was a member of the East India Company's Council of Justice. The British Museum Catalogue lists six works from his pen, all, save that on the Hottentots, dealing with medical and botanical subjects. A description of the plant collections he made at Saldanha Bay and the Cape in 1673, together with some other botanical observations of his, can be found in Plantarum Exoticarum Centuria Prima, published by the botanist Breyn in Danzig, 1678.

* The few details here given are drawn from the biographical sketch in Michaud's Biographie Universelle.

Translator's note.

The Latin text of the present edition is reprinted exactly from a copy of the small octavo volume printed at Schaffhausen in 1686 and now in possession of the South African Public Library, Cape Town.

This 1686 edition was made from a MS roll and was provided with corrections and annotations by the editor. It is not easy to say what the annotations provided by the editor were, as most of the footnotes seem to belong to Ten Rhyne himself; and the text is still in need of correction. In my translation I have silently ignored errors of punctuation. Slight verbal errors have been corrected in footnotes. In the few places where I suspect a deeper corruption I have not suggested any emendation. The grammar may be bad, but the sense is clear enough, and a critical discussion of the text seems uncalled for.

The translation is not the first that has been made in English. Within twenty years of the publication of the original an anonymous version was printed in England (A Collection of Voyages and Travels, etc., printed by H.C. for Awnsham and John Churchill at the Black Swan in

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Pater-noster-Row, London, 1704; vol. iv, pp. 829-45). This version contains a few happy phrases, some of which I have been glad to borrow. It is, for instance, to the anonymous translator that we owe the description of Aeva as ‘a civil, modest body, of rational discourse.’ But his is on the whole a poor version, full of mistakes and omissions, quite unfit to be reprinted.

As is characteristic of the time, the Latin of Ten Rhyne is somewhat laboured and affected, often conveying simple information in a pedantic and allusive fashion. But the style is, nevertheless, graceful and sensitive, and the translátor feels challenged to render not merely the matter but the manner of the original. However little Ten Rhyne succeeded in learning about the Cape in his brief stay, he was alert and interested and his narrative has freshness and charm.

On the scientific value of the information he has to give it is not for me to pronounce. But I have been at pains to set forth in the footnotes his naive dependence on his classical models for many eloquent sentences supposed to be descriptive of the Hottentots. The curious may find some instruction and amusement here. It is always worth while to impair the authority of print.

A point of general scientific interest in the present work is the attack on Descartes. It is worth noting in this connection that Ten Rhyne had imbibed his hostility to the à priori method of interpreting natural philosophy from an early work of Greek science that has attracted much attention in modern times. In 1669 and again in 1672 Ten Rhyne published discussions on the Hippocratic tract On Ancient Medicine.

B.F.