Cape Good Hope 1652-1702

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63 Simon de la Loubère
(Plates 46 & 47)

(See also item 69.) Translated from Vol. II of his ‘Du Royaume de Siam ...’, Paris 1691: there is also a very defective English translation, London 1693. He was the new Ambassador to Siam, sailing from Brest on March 1, 1687, with the fleet of six ships detailed in item 64, and-arrived in Table Bay on June 11 (DR 9/6).

I give three different views, of which two are entirely new, and the third, the view from the roads, is copied from a good Dutch map.

Everyone knows that the Dutch have an important establishment here, which safeguards their navigation to the Indies. The Fort* which defends it would perhaps not be greatly regarded in Europe, but it suffices in a country which has no neighbours to be feared, and where no enemy can come except from far off, and therefore with great difficulty.

The Company's Garden*, of which one of my plates gives the plan, is very spacious, as may be judged by comparing it with the fort; and although the soil is not too good, it nevertheless produces an abundance of cabbages, pumpkins, oranges, pomegranates-in a word, the fruits which keep well at sea, and are therefore greatly desired by those who make long voyages.

I saw in one corner, and under one and the same shelter, a camphor tree, a European fig, and a shrub some two feet high, said to be that which bears the tea, but which I mistook for a young peartree. It had neither flowers nor fruits, and very few leaves. Next to these, and under another shelter, were two or three pineapple plants; and these were all that were shown me as rarities in this country. Grapes are no longer rare, but there are only those which the Dutch have planted. The wine is white, and tolerably good. Some of our party went up to the top of the Table Mountain in search of unusual plants, but found none: nevertheless if they are closely examined it will be seen that there is none of them which does not have some peculiarity not found in our plants here [in France]. The shells found up there are not the remains of the Flood, as some have suspected [sic]: the birds, the monkeys and the Hottentots carry them up and leave them there.

The avenues of the Garden need hardly any attention, since the soil produces nothing but moss if it is not cultivated. For the rest, the neatness of the Garden has everything to demonstrate a wise economy, and nothing to indicate too great a neglect, like a commercial market-garden, the owners more interested in the profits to be gained from it than in its pleasantness, in which they are not interested.

The water which irrigates it by various small canals, enters it after passing through a mill [dr 30/10/85] which it operates, and below the garden it is used for washing clothes,

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[46] From the English edition of item 63.

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a part only being diverted and led to a reservoir on the shore of the roads, to which the ships send to take it.

The Garden is divided into various squares, each about the size of a quarter of the Place Royale [Paris, now Place de la Concorde]. They are surrounded by espaliers, to protect them from the winds, which are at times fierce enough to wreck the ships in the roads, unless they have good anchors and good cables. These winds form clouds, which at times gather between the Table Mountain and the Wind Hill, thus called because of these storms. An avenue of lemon- and orange-trees, planted directly in the soil and running from one end of the Garden to the other, greatly suffers from their fury. Except for this, the situations of the Garden and of the village lying a little nearer to the roads, are good, since they are fully exposed to the sun and shielded from the South winds, in this country the cold ones, The Dutchmen who are accustomed to these, say that if the South-East wind does not blow during their Summer (which is our Winter), lung-ail-ments are frequent and dangerous.

The short stay which I made did not allow me to learn thoroughly the customs of the Hottentots, the indigenous natives of the Cape; although, because of the great simplicity of their life, this could not be a lengthy study. They are called ‘Hottentots’ because when they dance they sing nothing but the word ‘Hotantot’ [see Hottentots*, Name]. They can be made to dance as much as one desires, because of their love for the brandy and tobacco given them by foreigners (and which indeed induced them to admit the Dutch into their country): that is to say, they stamp, now with one foot, now with the other, as if treading grapes, and say continually and energetically ‘hotantot, hotantot’, but in a quite low voice, as if they were out of breath or feared to awaken someone. This silent song has no diversity of pitch but only of beat, in that the first two syllables of ‘hotantot’ are always crochets, the last one always a minim.

They go all naked, as is to be seen in the picture I give of them. They have nothing but a skin on their shoulders like a cloak, and moreover they take this off at every instant; and then there remain only a little leather bag hung by a cord on their neck, and a piece of skin a little larger than one's hand, hung in front and attached to another cord around the waist; but this does not cover them when they are seen from the side or when they move briskly.

They have a pleasing build, and their walk is smoother than I can tell. They are born as white as Spaniards, but their hair is very woolly, and their features somewhat resemble those of negros; and for the rest they are very black only because they grease their body and face. They also grease their hair, and can be smelt at twenty paces if they are up-wind. Our folk give them the pots and kettles to clean, and before all else they take off the fat by handfulls and anoint themselves from head to foot. The grease protects them from the air and the sun, and makes them healthy and fit, and they prefer these natural advantages to those of a pleasing odour and to attractiveness. They are so nimble that many of them can outrun a horse. There is no torrent that they cannot swim [contradicted by practically all writers]. They are good shots with bows and spears, and courage-

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From the English edition of item 63.

ous almost to recklessness. At times they even overcome a lion, provided that they have enough skins or enough old clothing to protect their left arm: this they thrust into the animal's jaws, and stab him with a spear or knife held in the right hand. If there are two of them, one kills the lion while the other distracts its attention: if they are several, and have nothing to protect them from its blows, they do not hesitate to attack all together - as a rule one is killed, but the lion also dies, from the wounds given it by the others, although sometimes they all get off safely and nevertheless get rid of the lion.

Their women grease themselves as they do, although they pretend to some dressiness, such as fixing little bones and little shells to their short, curly and greasy hair. They also have necklaces of various colours, of glass, of bones or of any other material according to what the foreigners give them, or sell them. On each leg they have some fifty leather bands, which hit together and make a noise when they dance, and also protect them from the thorns when they go to gather wood, since this is their task.

Both men and women eat the guts almost without cleaning them, when our folk give them these, after putting them on the coals for barely a moment. If we offer them brandy, they pick up the first shell they can find to receive it in, and after blowing into it they use it for drinking. They eat their lice, as do those of Cochin-China; and if we find this odd, they explain that they do this because the lice eat them.

They all dwell in little huts made of branches and large rush mats, hardly as high as my waist, and it seemed to me that I should have been unable to lie down within them at full length. Under these mats they make a hole in the ground about two feet deep, and in this hole they make their fire, without troubling about the smoke, of which their huts are never free. They live by hunting, fishing, and from the milk and meat of their herds.

In such poverty they are always gay, always dancing and singing, living without occupation or toil, and troubling themselves as regards gold and silver only to buy a little brandy and tobacco, the vices which foreign trade has introduced into their customs.

When some of them had exercised with spears before me I offered them five or six

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necklaces of coloured beads; and they all so seized my hand that I could not open it to let go of the necklaces, nor could I explain myself to them. I was in this fix for some time, until they realised that they must set me free in. order to get what they desired. They love to obtain these necklaces for their wives, and after we had set sail I learnt that one of us had sold one such to one of them, for an écu [crown, Rxd.]. What little money they have, caring little for it, is the pary for work which they do at times for the Dutch, or for foreigners that touch at the Cape; although these do not greatly hasten to pay them.

They have only one wife apiece, except that their Chief has three; and they punish adultery with death. They kill their children when they have too many; and since as a rule they marry off those whom they keep when very young, one sees among them many little girls who are already widows and lack one joint of the little finger*, since when a woman loses her husband she cuts off a joint of the little finger, or of the fourth finger if she has repeatedly been widowed and has cut off all those of the little fingers. Nevertheless, she can dispense with this if she wishes, and there are also some husbands who observe the custom, when they lose their wives. Most of them are demi-eunuchs, so as to be more pleasing to the women [? ‘propres aux femmes’: see Testicle*]; and when the suitable age arrives they make themselves entirely eunuchs, to deprive themselves of sexual intercourse and enjoy a more healthy old age [in no other writer]. The Dutch once reared a Hottentot boy as a European, and sent him to Holland [not traced]. Some time later they brought him back to the Cape, where he could be useful to them among his people; but as soon as he again found himself among them, he remained with them, discarding the clothing and the manner of life of the Dutch.

They do not steal among themselves, nor in the Dutch houses, in which they are allowed without any oversight; and should theft occur, they punish it with death. Nevertheless, in the country where they can do it safely and hope not to be detected, they sometimes even commit murder in order to rob, showing that their contempt for riches is in reality nothing but their hatred of work.

Their Chief is appointed by the Dutch [better ‘is confirmed in his position by the Dutch’], and this chief is also their Judge; but those who have not been able to tolerate such dependency on foreigners have gone inland, to live there with the other Caffers.

I was told at first that they have no feelings of religion; but later I learned that, although they have neither priests nor temples, they never neglect to celebrate public rejoicings at New and Full Moons, which suggests a religious observance. I suspect that they have some trace of Manicheism, since they recognise a Good Principle and an Evil one, whom they call the Captain above and the Captain below. They say that the Captain above is good, there is no need to pray to him, one merely leaves him alone since he always does good; but that the Captain below is evil, and must be prayed to, to keep him from doing them harm: at least, that is what they say, but what can be seen of their conduct does not make it appear that they pray much. An intelligent Dutchman who knew them, told me that among the Hottentots he had found the names Hasdrubal and Bocchus.... [Sailed for Siam June 25.]