r is also tufted like the
Hottentot's: while his lips are thick like the Negro's. Tall in stature,
wiry and elastic in his muscles, the Kaffre varies in colour, through
all the shades of black and brown; being, in some portions of his area
nearly as dark as the Negro, in others simply brown like the Arab. The
eye is sometimes oblique; the opening generally narrow.

An opinion often gives a better picture than a description. Kaffres,
that have receded in the greatest degree from the Negro type, have been
so likened to the more southern Arabs as to have engendered the
hypothesis of an infusion of Arab blood.

The manners of the Kaffres of the Cape are those of pastoral tribes
under chieftains; tribes which, from their habits and social relations,
are naturally active, locomotive, warlike, and jealous of encroachment.
Next to marauding on the hunting-grounds of an American Indian,
interference with the pasture of a shepherd population is the surest way
to warfare.

It would be strange indeed if the Kaffre life and Kaffre physiognomy had
no peculiarities. However little in the way of physical influence we may
attribute to the geography of a country, no man ignores them altogether.
Now Kaffreland has very nearly a latitude of its own; inhabited lands
similarly related to the southern tropic being found in South America
and Australia only. And it has a soil still more exclusively
South-African. We connect the idea of the _desert_ with that of sand;
whilst _steppe_ is a term which is limited to the vast tracts of central
Asia. Now the Kaffre, and still more the Hottentot, area, dry like the
desert, and elevated like the steppe, is partially a _karro_. Its soil
is often a hard, cracked, and parched clay rather than a waste of sand,
and it constitutes an argillaceous table-land. Its vegetation has
strongly marked characters. Its Fauna has the same.

The language is peculiar. If English were spoken on Kosa or Sichuana
principles we should say

_b_un beam instead of _s_un beam.
_l_oon light ... _m_oon light.
_s_rand-son ... _g_rand-son, &c.,

since, in the Kaffre languages throughout, subordinate words in certain
syntactic combinations, accommodate their initial letter to that of the
leading word of the term.

Their polity and manners, too, are peculiar. The head man of the village
settles disputes; his tribunal being in the open air. From him an appeal
lies to a chief of higher power; and from him to