also for Spanish wine, or for French twelve stivers or more. One can also have brandy and arrack, but twice as dear as in Holstein.
There are many citizens and farmers here, who come from all nations [sic] in the Dutch ships to live here and do business, and get a good living. The farmers cultivate the land, and are prosperous. The citizens and farmers keep cattle, and especially sheep, which they sell to the mariners when they come here to get fresh victuals. They are for the most part freemen* and pay a moderate tax to the Dutch. Besides the Fortress*, which has many guns and a strong garrison, they also have a redoubt* in which a guard is set, and in addition fifty horsemen who have their camp [see Cavalry-Post*] outside the Fortress, to keep good watch, and when the savages or Hottentots come with their beasts, oxen, cows and sheep, to sell them, and are seen afar off, then some of these horsemen ride out to meet them, and bring only so many of them to the fort as are allowed at one time. Then the sale is carried out there, which consists only in bargaining and barter, the Governor taking the beasts against tobacco, copper rings, beads of glass and other materials, knives, looking-glasses and such-like trifles. I once saw how the Governor bought fifty oxen and sixty sheep for very small trifles that cost him not much more than ten rixdollars. He sells part of these beasts to the citizens and farmers, who keep them and sell them to the ships that come from Europe or the Indies.
When folk other than the Dutch come here they must pay for their anchorage*, and also cannot take on their fresh water without charge. The Dutch well know how to take their profit here, and will little by little go further and seek further advantages, since with so little pains they have got a firm foothold in Africa. The Savages, who are unprovided with arms and are afraid of powder, will be able to offer them little resistance.
These natives ... are wild, beast-like people, though not so black as the Moors of Ethiopia. They smear all their bodies with oil and the fat from the guts of slaughtered beasts in which the dung still remains, from which they give off a revolting smell. They eat these guts without washing them, only scraping the dung out with their fingers and laying them a little on the embers, even before they are half-cooked; at times when they are very hungry they eat them entirely raw. They go all naked, men, women and children, except that the older ones hang a little piece of goatskin before their privities. Their ornaments on arms and legs are copper rings, or for some of them also the raw guts of beasts which they also eat raw when they are somewhat dry. When it is cold they hang over their shoulders a lion-skin, or a cloak made of lion- or goat-skins, and this also they smear with oil so that they stink nastily. They take the blubber of the dead whales which are washed ashore, and from this make the oil. They are called Hottentots [see Hottentots*, Name] because when they are merry and dance they continually call out ‘Hottentots, Hottentots’. They are a lazy and grimy people who will not work; and the Dutch have taken some of them to do their dirty work, for which they receive tobacco, rice and other food. Otherwise they are idle, and like to sit without doing anything. When one wishes to get them to work, such as at digging, churning, sweeping and cattleminding, one must first give them a little and let them hope for more when the work is
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