Cape Good Hope 1652-1702

11 Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
(Plates 15 & 16)

Translated from the second volume of his ‘De Zes Reizen ...’ According to his own account, he was at the Cape in 1649 only, but he oddly includes notes on conditions there after the Dutch occupation, and even tells of an episode in 1660. The portions definitely relating to 1649 are omitted here: for these see in BVR.

Of all the people I met with in my journeyings I found none so horrible and beastly as the Camouks*, of whom I have spoken in my information on Persia, and those of the Cape de bone Esperance which are called Kaffers or Hottentots. When they speak they fart with their tongues in their mouths, yet, although their speech is almost without separation of word from word, they understand each other very readily. They have no clothing other than the skins of the wild beasts which they kill in the forests: when in winter it is very cold there ... they turn the hair inwards, and when it is hot they turn it outwards. But none among them except the richest are thus clothed: the rest have

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nothing but a poor scrap of linen [sic: ‘leinwand’] to cover their privities. Both men and women are lean and short of stature; and as soon as a male child is born the mother cuts away his right testicle*, and gives him sea-water to drink and tobacco to chew. This right testicle is removed since they say it makes him speedier in running: some among them can overtake roebucks. I was inquisitive enough to touch many of them, and found nothing on them but the left testicles. They have no knowledge of gold or silver, and properly speaking know nothing of religion.... Neither men nor women are ashamed to show their nakedness, and they live almost as beasts.

It is a great convenience for the ships to find some refreshing here, and the Dutch were well advised to build a fort there. There is now a fine Town* inhabited by all sorts of folk who live near the Dutch, and all the seeds brought from Europe and Asia and sown there grow better than in the places they are brought from. It is a very good country, which ... lies at thirtyfive degrees and some minutes of latitude [sic]. I add that it is neither the air nor the heat which makes these Kaffers so black as they are. Wishing to know the reason of this, as also why they stink so greatly, I obtained it from a girl who, as soon as her mother had borne her, was taken and nourished and brought up in the Fort [Eva*], and who is as white as our women in Holland. She told me, that the blackness of the Kaffers comed from the smearing with grease which they make from various herbs known to them, and that, if they are not smeared with it as soon as they are born, they would become dropsical like the other blacks of Africa, and like the Abyssinians of Saba, of whom one leg is often twice as thick as the other [elephantiasis]; and such folk seldom live for more than forty years. These Kaffers, however beastly they are, yet have a special knowledge of herbs, which they know how to use against the sicknesses from which they suffer, as the Dutch have proved. If they are bitten by any poisonous beasts, or suffer from any ulcers, they can bring about a cure in a short time by means of the herbs which they know how to select....

In 1661 [1660 by Valentyn, vol. I; and Saar, item 10] the ship Westvriesland returned from Batavia with a young Dutch nobleman who had squandered all his money in Holland and taken service with the Company. While he was in Batavia he was bitten in the leg by one of the many flies there, and from this an ulcer developed, on which all the surgeons of Batavia had used all their art and knowledge in vain; and if my [Governor-] General had not granted him leave to depart they would undoubtedly have taken off his leg. When they came to the Cape [dr 1/3/60] the Skipper sent him ashore to give him some relief. These Kaffers began to examine him, and said that if they were allowed they would soon cure him. The Skipper put him in their hands, and in less than fifteen days his leg was as fit as the other in which he had never suffered any pain.

As soon as a ship has anchored at the Cape, those in charge give a part of the soldiers and crew leave to go ashore to refresh themselves there. Those who have been the most sick during the journey are sent ashore first, each in turn, and go into the town, where they get board for seven or eight stivers a day, and for this sum are well entertained.

The Dutch custom is to send out parties from time to time to get knowledge of the

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[15] Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, from item 11.

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[16] From item 11 (and see DR 21/3/58).

country, and those who go the furthest are best rewarded. One party of soldiers under a serjeant went so far inland that night fell on them. They made a large fire, both for protection from the lions and for warmth, and lay down around it to rest. When they had fallen asleep a lion came and seized one of the soldiers by the arm, and the serjeant killed it with his musket. When it was dead, they must break open its jaw with great difficulty to extract the soldier's arm, which was bitten right through.... The Kaffers healed the soldier's arm in twelve days. [See Plate 16, above.]

In the Fort a quantity of lion and tiger skins are to be seen [see Museum*]. Among other things there is the skin of a horse [? Quagga] killed by the Kaffers: it is white, covered with black stripes and spotted like a leopard, and without a tail. Two or three miles* from the Fort the Dutch found [dr 19/8/56] a dead lion which had four porcupinequills in its body, three-quarters of each in the flesh, from which it was judged that the porcupine had killed it. They afterwards set the skin, with the quills, in the Fort.

One mile* from the Fort is a fine Town*, which daily grows larger. When the ships of the Dutch Company come here, and any seaman or soldier is desirous of remaining, this is freely granted him [sic]. He takes as much land as he can cultivate, and there grows, as I have said already, all the plants one could wish for, and pulses, and even grapes. Rice is also sown [dr 17/5/56], and young ostriches may be hunted, and [game for] meat, sea- and river-fish. If one wishes to get these young ostriches, one goes to the nest when they are seven or eight days old, and sets a stick in the ground, and ties these young birds to it by one leg so that they cannot fly away. Then he lets them be fed by the parents until they are big enough, and then takes them away to eat or sell.

When the Dutch began to settle at the Cape de Bone Esperance, they took, as I have said, the daughter of one of these Kaffers as soon as she was born. She is white, and pretty, except that her nose is somewhat flat, and she serves as interpreter for the

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Dutch [Eva;* but what follows is invented]. There was a Frenchman who had a child by her, but the Company would not allow him to marry her, and on the contrary fined him eight hundred French pounds of his pay, which was indeed somewhat severe.

There is a great quantity of lions and tigers in this land. The Dutch have found a pretty good means to kill them: they tie a musket to a stake thrust into the ground, and on the end of the musket they put food, to which a string is tied and made fast to the trigger. When the beast comes to eat the food, it pulls on the string, which pulls the trigger, and the musket* fires its bullet into the throat or body of the beast.

The Kaffers eat a root* which much resembles our sugar-root [‘suiker-wortel’: Harris has ‘carrots’]: this they roast, and it serves them for bread. Sometimes also they make flour from it, which tastes like oatmeal. As regards meat, this they eat quite raw, as also even fish. As to the guts of the beasts, they press these between their fingers to remove the dung, and so eat them. The women commonly put these guts, when dry, around their legs; and especially the guts of such wild beasts as have been taken in the forests by their menfolk; and these serve them as an adornment. They also eat tortoises, after they have laid them on the fire until they can take off their shells. They are very accurate in the throwing of their azagays, a sort of javelins; and those who have none take instead a stick, as thick as a thumb and as long as their throwing-spears, of a very hard wood: to this they make a pointed end, and can throw it from afar off to hit a target a hand's-breadth wide. They go with these sticks to the seashore, and as soon as a fish comes a little above the water they never fail to hit it.

Regarding those birds like our ducks, of which the eggs have no whites, there is such a quantity of them that they are killed with clubs in a bay fifteen miles* from the Cape [?: possibly error for ‘island’, Dassen Island, reading ‘the Cape’ as Table Bay]. All the women of the Kaffers... are so hot-blooded that when they have their menses and make water, if a European pass over it he at once gets a head-ache and fever, and even sometimes the plague.

When my Lord van Diemen was the [Governor-] General [1636-1648], the Dutch took one of the boys to Batavia. The General took great pains to have him taught the languages, and I add that in seven or eight years he fully learnt Dutch and Portuguese. At last he wished to return to his own land, and the General, not wishing to compel him to remain, had him provided with linen and clothing, since he thought that this Kaffer on his return to the Cape would live like the Dutch, and be helpful to them in getting supplies for their ships when they called. But no sooner was he come to the Cape than he threw the clothes into the sea, and ran off with the other blacks, and gave himself again to the eating of raw flesh. Since then he has remained with them, without it being in any way helpful to the Dutch. [Not identified.]

When these Kaffers go into the woods to hunt, they assemble in great numbers, and make such a shouting and braying that the animals are entirely affrighted; and I add, that I have been assured that such shouting scares even the lions.